Do Individual Auditors Have Their Own Styles? Evidence from Clients' Financial Statement Comparability in China
基于中国十大审计事务所的客户数据，研究发现个体审计师对财务报表可比性有显著影响，且这种影响在四大审计事务所和行业专家中更强，主要通过客户会计灵活性和审计师个人特征实现。
SYNOPSIS In this study, we investigate whether individual auditors are associated with the comparability of their clients' financial statements, based on a sample of Chinese companies audited by ten large audit firms. We demonstrate that individual auditors have an incremental effect on comparability, beyond the office-level effect. We also find that the style of individual auditors is stronger when they are affiliated with Big 4 audit firms (compared to non-Big 4 large audit firms) and when they are industry experts. In addition, two possible channels of enhanced comparability are identified: (1) clients' accounting flexibility, which provides opportunities for auditors to exert influences; and (2) individual auditors' characteristics, such as age, position, and academic degree, which affect auditors' abilities to exert influence. Our results are robust to alternative comparability and industry expertise measures, to various sampling methods, and to corrections for potential endogeneity problems. JEL Classifications: M41; M42.