How Did the COVID-19 Pandemic Affect Audit Fees and Filing Delays?
研究了新冠疫情初期居家令对审计费用和申报延迟的影响，发现居家令未显著改变审计费用，但增加了申报延迟，尤其在高错报风险和高协调难度的审计项目中更明显。
SUMMARY We investigate the effect of the 2019 Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) on audit fees and filing delays following the pandemic’s onset. Employing location-specific stay-at-home (S@H) mandates to proxy for COVID’s disrupting effects on audits, we fail to find evidence of a change in audit fees in response to initial S@H mandates. However, S@H mandates are associated with an increase in filing delays. We drill down to explore two mechanisms underlying the effect of COVID-19 on filing delays: increased risk of material misstatement and difficulties in audit team coordination. We find that S@H mandates increase filing delays to a greater extent for engagements with high misstatement risk and engagements with high coordination challenges. Our findings are important for understanding the pandemic’s effect on audits and have implications for future audits in regard to audit team coordination. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text. JEL Classifications: M40; M41; M42.