Blockholders’ Ownership and Audit Fees: The Impact of the Corporate Governance Model
研究了股东和利益相关者两种公司治理模式下，大股东持股与审计费用的不同关系，发现股东国家呈U型、利益相关者国家呈倒U型。
This paper examines how two prominent corporate governance models, namely the shareholder and stakeholder models, have different effects on the relation between agency conflicts and the supply, and demand of audit services. Shareholder (stakeholder) countries rely heavily on public (private) information to reduce information asymmetry for outside investors in the context of high (low) litigation risk. We expect audit fees to reflect the level of agency conflicts in shareholder countries as well as the needs for information of the major blockholders in stakeholder countries. Using a sample of 7982 firm-year observations from 19 countries, we find a U-shaped relation between controlling shareholding and audit fees for shareholder countries and an inverted U-shaped relation between controlling shareholding and audit fees for stakeholder countries. These results are consistent across different firm-level governance arrangements.