審計公費與未來企業風險變動之關聯

Abstract

本研究旨在分析審計公費與未來企業風險變動之關聯，運用台灣上市櫃企業為樣本，採用2010至2016年為樣本期間，以債務比率、流動比率、資產報酬率以及營運活動現金流量為衡量企業風險之指標，並運用主成分分析技術（Principal component analysis）化為兩種因素，分別為償債能力與營運能力，並運用兩種因素未來變動數作為本文主要的實驗變數，預期與審計公費呈現顯著負相關。 實證結果顯示，未來一年期營運能力變動與審計公費呈現負向顯著關係，然而，未來一年期償債能力變動並沒有達到顯著水準，另外在額外分析中發現此狀況僅限於四大會計師事務所查核之企業，而將營運變動的時間延長至兩年期與三年期，也得到企業未來營運變動反映在當期審計公費的結論。本研究實結果顯示，會計師在進行審計定價時會將企業風險營運表現方面的未來變動納入考量，進而反映在當期審計公費中。

This study is designed to analyze the association between audit fees and future changes in business risk. Using the samples from listed companies in Taiwan over year 2010 to 2016, I choose leverage, current ratio, return on assets, and operating cash flows as the measures to represent business risk and combined them into two factors, solvency and operating performance respectively. Besides, I use the change in two factors to be the major experimental variables. I expect that there is a negative association between audit fees and the change in future firms’ financial performances. The result shows that a significant connection between audit fees and change in one-year-ahead operating performance. However, I could not find the relation on audit fees and change in one-year- ahead solvency. In the additional analysis, the association described above exist only for firms which are audited by Big4 audit firms. Besides, the relation still holds for two-year ahead and three-year-ahead change in operating performance. Thus, auditors may consider the future change in business risk for operating performance into audit pricing process, and finally reflect in the current audit fees.