【文章內(nèi)容簡(jiǎn)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(jì)質(zhì)量與審計(jì)定價(jià)JongHag Choi, Chansog(Francis)Kim, JeongBon Kim, and YoonseokZang 摘要：此論文使用20002005年間對(duì)美國(guó)審計(jì)事務(wù)所大量取樣的所得數(shù)據(jù)，以此調(diào)查審計(jì)事務(wù)所中當(dāng)?shù)剞k事處規(guī)模大小對(duì)審計(jì)質(zhì)量和審計(jì)價(jià)格。實(shí)證檢驗(yàn)中，審計(jì)質(zhì)量是由異常應(yīng)計(jì)來(lái)衡量的，辦事處規(guī)模則有兩種衡量方法：一個(gè)是基于每個(gè)辦事處的審計(jì)客戶數(shù)量，另一個(gè)是基于每個(gè)辦事處掙得的審計(jì)費(fèi)用總額。調(diào)查結(jié)果顯示，辦事處規(guī)模大小對(duì)審計(jì)質(zhì)量與審計(jì)費(fèi)用都有著明顯的正相關(guān)關(guān)系，即使控制了國(guó)家級(jí)審計(jì)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(duì)規(guī)模小的辦事處來(lái)說(shuō)，能過(guò)提供更高質(zhì)量的審計(jì)。質(zhì)量上的差異在審計(jì)市場(chǎng)中有價(jià)碼的差別。關(guān)鍵字：審計(jì)事務(wù)所，辦事處規(guī)模，審計(jì)質(zhì)量，審計(jì)定價(jià) 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(lái)源。當(dāng)我們把對(duì)事務(wù)所整體的分析轉(zhuǎn)變?yōu)閷?duì)特定的城市中的辦事處的分析時(shí)，我們對(duì)審計(jì)事務(wù)所的看法同時(shí)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(shí)，四大會(huì)計(jì)師事務(wù)時(shí)也就沒(méi)有那么大了。舉例來(lái)說(shuō)，如果安然公司代表安達(dá)信會(huì)計(jì)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(rùn)。簡(jiǎn)介正如前文所說(shuō)，相對(duì)于國(guó)家級(jí)辦事處來(lái)說(shuō)，市級(jí)審計(jì)辦事處的規(guī)模對(duì)審計(jì)質(zhì)量有著更為重要的決定作用。因?yàn)槭屑?jí)辦事處是半自治的單位，在審計(jì)公司中有他專屬的客戶群。真正管理和執(zhí)行審計(jì)委托合同（包括審計(jì)服務(wù)的交付和審核意見的發(fā)表）的并不是全國(guó)總部，而是辦事處合作伙伴。就這點(diǎn)而言，威廉與弗蘭西斯提出觀點(diǎn)，審計(jì)獨(dú)立性的評(píng)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?yàn)樘囟蛻舻拇蠖鄶?shù)的審計(jì)決定都是由單獨(dú)的辦事處制定的。由安達(dá)信會(huì)計(jì)師事務(wù)所休斯敦辦事處所審計(jì)的安然集團(tuán)的倒閉便是一個(gè)很好的例子，證明辦事處級(jí)別的審計(jì)質(zhì)量的重要性之高。然而，現(xiàn)在許多審計(jì)研究都把焦點(diǎn)集中于國(guó)家級(jí)審計(jì)公司的特點(diǎn)，認(rèn)為兩個(gè)審計(jì)質(zhì)量基本的決定性因素是審計(jì)公司規(guī)模和審計(jì)行業(yè)領(lǐng)導(dǎo)。研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，一般而言，擁有國(guó)際知名商標(biāo)的大審計(jì)公司（比如四大）或是有行業(yè)專長(zhǎng)的公司比非有名及缺乏行業(yè)專長(zhǎng)的小公司擁有更高質(zhì)量的審計(jì)服務(wù)。這個(gè)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(jì)質(zhì)量是平均的。因此，我們幾乎沒(méi)有收集到不同辦事處的審計(jì)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(jì)質(zhì)量或是審計(jì)定價(jià)。所以有一個(gè)問(wèn)題：辦事處規(guī)模是不是決定審計(jì)質(zhì)量的另一個(gè)因素因此審計(jì)定價(jià)比審計(jì)公司規(guī)模和行業(yè)領(lǐng)先地位的高。我們只在為這個(gè)還沒(méi)解決的問(wèn)題提供直接的證據(jù)。最近有幾項(xiàng)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(jì)質(zhì)量有所不同。例如，最初美國(guó)的雷諾和弗朗西斯使用單獨(dú)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(lái)衡量客戶規(guī)模時(shí)，“五大審計(jì)師對(duì)大客戶更為謹(jǐn)慎?！贝送?，弗格森和弗朗西斯等發(fā)現(xiàn)，在澳大利亞和美國(guó)審計(jì)市場(chǎng)中，當(dāng)市級(jí)行業(yè)領(lǐng)先水平與國(guó)家級(jí)領(lǐng)先水平聯(lián)合時(shí)，審計(jì)收費(fèi)是最高的。而單獨(dú)國(guó)家級(jí)行業(yè)領(lǐng)先水平則沒(méi)有這樣的效果。隨后，弗朗西斯等證實(shí)如果審計(jì)師是市級(jí)行業(yè)領(lǐng)導(dǎo)者或同時(shí)為國(guó)家級(jí)與市級(jí)領(lǐng)導(dǎo)水平時(shí)，非正常應(yīng)計(jì)所代理的客戶收益相對(duì)較高。換句話說(shuō)，研究結(jié)果表明單獨(dú)的國(guó)家級(jí)領(lǐng)先水平對(duì)審計(jì)質(zhì)量沒(méi)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(jì)質(zhì)量成正相關(guān)，說(shuō)明審計(jì)辦事處的地理位置對(duì)審計(jì)質(zhì)量是有決定性影響的。整合以上的