Why do female lead auditors charge a fee premium? evidence from the UK audit market
研究发现英国由女性首席审计师审计的公司审计报告滞后更短但审计费用更高，客户愿意为更及时的审计支付溢价，这解释了女性审计师的费用溢价现象。
Existing research documents a fee premium for audits led by female partners ( Ittonen and Peni, 2012 , Hardies et al., 2015 , Burke et al., 2019 , Lee et al., 2019 , Hardies et al., 2021 ). We take this work forward by investigating a possible justification for the observed premium by examining how auditor gender is related to audit report lag and whether the female partner audit fee premium is driven by audit report lag. We find that United Kingdom companies audited by a female lead auditor have a significantly shorter audit report lag but pay a significantly higher audit fee. In further analysis, we find that the fee premium for female partner–led audits is higher for clients receiving a more timely audit opinion. Our findings are consistent with female lead auditors delivering more timely audits and with audit clients being prepared to pay a premium for such timeliness. Our study extends our understanding of the importance of gender in the auditing process and the value clients see in audits led by female auditors. Given the relatively low proportion of female lead auditors, our findings should also encourage audit firms to appreciate the economic value of female lead auditors and to actively facilitate their progression to senior roles.