Accounting Accruals, Audit Quality, and Audit Pricing
研究了企业会计选择与审计师审计努力选择之间的互动如何影响审计定价，发现保守的应计策略会增强现任审计师的竞争优势，导致初始审计低价揽客折扣更大。
This study examines the impact of the interaction between firms' accounting choices and auditors' audit effort choices on audit pricing. In a multi-period model, I focus on a central feature of accounting: reversing accruals. I find that initial low-balling, defined as lower audit fees than audit costs, arises independently from the direction of accruals, but increases with more conservatism in the first engagement period. The reason is that a conservative accruals strategy implies understated earnings today and overstated earnings in the future, which creates a higher investor demand for auditing services in future periods. The incumbent auditor can satisfy this future demand better than any competitor, because the first-period learning cost is sunk. Thus, conservatism enhances the competitive advantage of the incumbent and increases the future quasi-rent, which is used for a higher initial low-balling discount. I further show implications of the auditor-firm interaction for fee-cutting, a common proxy for low-balling, and the frequency of modified audit opinions, a common proxy for audit quality. Thus, my model provides a theoretical foundation for the connection between high low-balling discounts, accounting accruals, and audit quality.