The Relationship Between Auditor Industry Expertise and Related-party Sales
Other Title
會計師產業專家與關係人銷貨間之關聯性
Journal
會計審計論叢
Journal Volume
6
Journal Issue
2
Start Page
33
End Page
80
ISSN
2221-9374
Date Issued
2016-12
Author(s)
蔡元棠
Abstract
Auditor industry expertise has become a popular issue in recent years. Many studies focus on the relationship between auditor industry expertise and audit quality. However, few researchers discuss the signaling function of auditor industry professionals. That is, companies hire auditor industry specialists to validate their financial reports and mitigate the investors' concern. This study therefore tries to fill this gap. We choose related-party sales as our main test variable. First, we examine whether management prefers to hire an industry specialist when a company has a higher level of related-party sales, in order to audit its financial reports and thereby mitigate outside investors' concern. The empirical results support this explanation and our findings are the same in both the firm and partner level. In addition, we find when a company has higher accounting information quality, its management is more likely to hire an auditor industry specialist. However, this hypothesis may be weakened if a company has independent director(s) on its board since both the roles of an independent director and a specialist are quite similar. Second, we test market reaction for hiring an auditor industry specialist. The results show when a company has higher accounting information quality and the amount of related-party sales increases, in some situations, hiring an auditor industry specialist can mitigate the negative concern from outside investors.
Subjects
Auditor industry expertise
Related-party sales
Signaling function
Independent director
Accounting information quality
Type
journal article