Redacted Disclosure and Audit Fees
研究了上市公司在重大合同中删节披露是否影响审计费用，发现审计师因感知业务和诉讼风险而对删节公司收取更高费用，但信息环境更透明的公司（如大公司、自愿披露多的公司）这种影响会减弱。
We examine whether and how redacted disclosure in material contracts is related to the cost of an audit. Prior studies document that redaction of mandatory disclosure affects firms’ operating performance, voluntary disclosure decisions, and various market outcomes due to increased information asymmetry. Auditors do not face this information constraint and can access redacted information with little effort, and thus should not be affected by the redacted disclosure. Our findings show that while redacted disclosure has limited impact on audit effort, auditors do charge higher fees for redacting firms as they perceive redacted disclosure as an indicator of potential business and litigation risk. We also find that the positive relation between redacted disclosure and audit fees is mitigated for firms with a more transparent information environment (i.e., larger firms, firms providing more voluntary disclosure, firms with large customers, and firms with higher institutional ownership). Overall, our results suggest that auditors become more cautious in response to clients’ nondisclosure choices from public filings.