TITLE:
An Empirical Study: Auditors’ Characteristics and Audit Fee
AUTHORS:
Siheng Liu
KEYWORDS:
Audit Fee, Audit Quality, Individual Characteristics of Auditor
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Accounting,
Vol.6 No.2,
April
28,
2017
ABSTRACT: The
existing literature about determinants of audit fee finds that those
characteristics of a firm that conveys the “high
quality” signal to the market can obtain higher audit fees. These studies ignore the differences
among auditors, which are contradicted with individual auditor behavioral literature that showing
different characteristics of auditors influence audit quality. Therefore, this
paper hypothesizes that different auditors obtain different audit fees. Using
the data of listed companies in China from 2010 to 2015, this paper constructs
the regression model of the audit fees at individual auditor level and finds
that age, gender, educational background, industry specialization, position and
busyness all have significantly correlations with the audit fees. The results
illustrate that audit client considers at individual auditor level when
choosing audit services and pays different level of audit fees, which provide
empirical evidences to selection and cultivation of auditors.