【文章內(nèi)容簡介】 a particular client than a potential litigation risk fromaudit failures, in particular, when the offices are small in above arguments lead us topredict that large local offices with relatively deep local clienteles are less likely to promise audit quality with respect to a particular client, and thus that they are likely to provide higherquality audit services, ceteris paribus, pared with small local offices with relatively thin such a case, one would observe a positive association between office size and call this prediction the economic dependence AND CONCLUDING REMARKS While previous auditing research has examined whether and how audit fees and audit qualityare influenced by audit firm size at the national level and auditor industry leadership at both thenational level and the city level, this line of research has paid little attention to the effect of thesize of a local engagement office within an audit firm(., office size)in the context of auditquality and audit previous research, the focus of this paper is on whether the officesize is an additional, engagementspecific factor determining audit quality and audit pricing overand beyond nationallevel audit firm size and officelevel industry results can besummarized as , we find that the office size is positively associated with audit quality proxied by unsigned abnormal finding is consistent with what we call the economic dependenceperspective: large(small)local offices with deep officelevel clienteles are less(more)likely to depend on a particular client, and thus are better(less)able to resist client pressure on substandardor biased , we find that large local offices are able to charge higher audit fees totheir clients than small ones, which is consistent with the view that large offices provide higherquality audits than small offices, and this quality differential is priced as a fee premium in themarket for audit , the above finding is at odds with the view that large officeshave a cost advantage in producing audit services of similar quality and thus are able to chargelower billing rates pared with small together, our results highlight that officesize is one of the most important engagementspecific determinants of audit quality and , while we use two alternative, advanced accrual models to alleviate a concern overthe limitations inherent in the Jones(1991)model estimates of abnormal accruals, our measures ofaudit quality, namely unsigned abnormal accruals, may suffer from nontrivial measurement therefore cannot pletely rule out the possibility that the estimated coefficients on our testvariables are , given that a contemporaneous study of Francis and Yu(2009)documents the same positive association between audit quality and audit office size using twoadditional proxies for audit quality, ., auditors’ tendency to issue goingconcern opinion andclient firms’ likelihood to meet earnings benchmarks, we believe that our results are unlikelydriven by possible measurement , our results suggest that both regulators and audit firms should pay more attention tothe behavior of small offices because they are more likely to be economically dependent on aparticular client, and thus to promise audit particular, Big 4 audit firms may need toimplement strategies for providing a more homogenous level of audit services across offices ofdifferent sizes because a poorquality audit by a small office could significantly damage thereputation of the entire today’s global business environment, the issue of maintaining“uniform quality” should be an even more important concern to reputable auditors because theirbusiness bees increasingly internationalized in terms of locations and client , it may be more difficult for Big 4 audit firms to maintain uniform quality of service atthe office level across different jurisdictions around the , local offices in differentjurisdictions(., European Union and China)have their own client bases and are likely to bemore autonomous in making auditrelated decisions than those within the is thereforepossible that the size of a local practicing office plays a more significant role in determining thequality of audit services in other than in the the scarcity ofinternational evidence regarding the effect of audit office size on audit quality and audit pricing,we remend further research on the issue using international samples from different ，審計質(zhì)量與審計定價JongHag Choi, Chansog(Francis)Kim, JeongBon Kim, and YoonseokZang 摘要：此論文使用20002005年間對美國審計事務(wù)所大量取樣的所得數(shù)據(jù)，以此調(diào)查審計事務(wù)所中當(dāng)?shù)剞k事處規(guī)模大小對審計質(zhì)量和審計價格。實證檢驗中，審計質(zhì)量是由異常應(yīng)計來衡量的，辦事處規(guī)模則有兩種衡量方法：一個是基于每個辦事處的審計客戶數(shù)量，另一個是基于每個辦事處掙得的審計費用總額。調(diào)查結(jié)果顯示，辦事處規(guī)模大小對審計質(zhì)量與審計費用都有著明顯的正相關(guān)關(guān)系，即使控制了國家級審計公司的規(guī)模以及辦公水平行業(yè)，結(jié)果也是如此。這正相關(guān)關(guān)系印證了規(guī)模大的本土辦事處相對規(guī)模小的辦事處來說，能過提供更高質(zhì)量的審計。質(zhì)量上的差異在審計市場中有價碼的差別。關(guān)鍵字：審計事務(wù)所，辦事處規(guī)模，審計質(zhì)量，審計定價 數(shù)據(jù)可用性：數(shù)據(jù)皆為公開可用，論文中有指明數(shù)據(jù)來源。當(dāng)我們把對事務(wù)所整體的分析轉(zhuǎn)變?yōu)閷μ囟ǖ某鞘兄械霓k事處的分析時，我們對審計事務(wù)所的看法同時也有了劇烈的變化。根據(jù)迪安哥羅在1981年的論證，當(dāng)分析辦事處規(guī)模時，四大會計師事務(wù)時也就沒有那么大了。舉例來說，如果安然公司代表安達信會計事務(wù)所上市客戶小于2%的收入，那他代表的就是休斯敦辦事處大于35%的利潤。簡介正如前文所說，相對于國家級辦事處來說，市級審計辦事處的規(guī)模對審計質(zhì)量有著更為重要的決定作用。因為市級辦事處是半自治的單位，在審計公司中有他專屬的客戶群。真正管理和執(zhí)行審計委托合同（包括審計服務(wù)的交付和審核意見的發(fā)表）的并不是全國總部，而是辦事處合作伙伴。就這點而言，威廉與弗蘭西斯提出觀點，審計獨立性的評估需要更多地關(guān)注辦事處的程度而不是整體公司的程度。因為特定客戶的大多數(shù)的審計決定都是由單獨的辦事處制定的。由安達信會計師事務(wù)所休斯敦辦事處所審計的安然集團的倒閉便是一個很好的例子，證明辦事處級別的審計質(zhì)量的重要性之高。然而，現(xiàn)在許多審計研究都把焦點集中于國家級審計公司的特點，認為兩個審計質(zhì)量基本的決定性因素是審計公司規(guī)模和審計行業(yè)領(lǐng)導(dǎo)。研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，一般而言，擁有國際知名商標(biāo)的大審計公司（比如四大）或是有行業(yè)專長的公司比非有名及缺乏行業(yè)專長的小公司擁有更高質(zhì)量的審計服務(wù)。這個研究隱含的假設(shè)是同一公司在不同城市的不同規(guī)模的辦事處的審計質(zhì)量是平均的。因此，我們幾乎沒有收集到不同辦事處的審計質(zhì)量的差別，特別是本土辦事處的規(guī)模是否影響到審計質(zhì)量或是審計定價。所以有一個問題：辦事處規(guī)模是不是決定審計質(zhì)量的另一個因素因此審計定價比審計公司規(guī)模和行業(yè)領(lǐng)先地位的高。我們只在為這個還沒解決的問題提供直接的證據(jù)。最近有幾項研究都提供直接證據(jù)證明同一公司的不同辦事處的審計質(zhì)量有所不同。例如，最初美國的雷諾和弗朗西斯使用單獨的辦事處作為研究的單位，他們發(fā)現(xiàn)當(dāng)用具體辦事處的客戶來衡量客戶規(guī)模時，“五大審計師對大客戶更為謹慎?！贝送猓ジ裆透ダ饰魉沟劝l(fā)現(xiàn)，在澳大利亞和美國審計市場中，當(dāng)市級行業(yè)領(lǐng)先水平與國家級領(lǐng)先水平聯(lián)合時，審計收費是最高的。而單獨國家級行業(yè)領(lǐng)先水平則沒有這樣的效果。隨后，弗朗西斯等證實如果審計師是市級行業(yè)領(lǐng)導(dǎo)者或同時為國家級與市級領(lǐng)導(dǎo)水平時，非正常應(yīng)計所代理的客戶收益相對較高。換句話說，研究結(jié)果表明單獨的國家級領(lǐng)先水平對審計質(zhì)量沒有特別顯著的影響。最近，崔等人指出辦事處與總部的地理集中程度和客戶的應(yīng)計質(zhì)量成正相關(guān)，說明審計辦事處的地理位置對審計質(zhì)量是有決定性影響的。整合以上的