The Effect of Audit Fee and Audit Firm Size on Earnings Management

Earnings are the most important number in financial reporting and they can provide information that is useful to managers and investors. However, in order to show good performance of companies, managers always manage earnings to provide untrue financial reporting in order to maximum their private in...

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Main Author: GAO, HANJI
Format: Dissertation (University of Nottingham only)
Language:English
Published: 2017
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/45786/
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author GAO, HANJI
author_facet GAO, HANJI
author_sort GAO, HANJI
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description Earnings are the most important number in financial reporting and they can provide information that is useful to managers and investors. However, in order to show good performance of companies, managers always manage earnings to provide untrue financial reporting in order to maximum their private interest. This can reduce earnings quality and damage shareholders also investors’ benefits. In this case, audit plays a vital role in constrain earnings management, which can provide independent assurance of the credibility of financial information and contribute to efficient function of capital market allocation. Among audit services, audit fee and audit firm size are widely focused by investors and regulators. This study attempts to observe the effect of audit fee and audit firm size on earnings management. Some theories are showed at first to underlay this dissertation. According to prior studies about relationship between audit fee, audit firm size and earnings management, two hypotheses are put forward in this study. Using 634 listed companies of non-financial industries out of the total 1320 from 2011 to 2016, cross-sectional modified-Jones model is selected to calculate the discretionary accrual as proxy for earnings management. From analysis, it is found that earnings management has no significant relationship with audit fee finally. However, audit firm size is positively and significantly associated with earnings management. According to these findings, this paper also provides some recommendation to listed companies and audit firms.
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spelling nottingham-457862018-04-10T15:12:51Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/45786/ The Effect of Audit Fee and Audit Firm Size on Earnings Management GAO, HANJI Earnings are the most important number in financial reporting and they can provide information that is useful to managers and investors. However, in order to show good performance of companies, managers always manage earnings to provide untrue financial reporting in order to maximum their private interest. This can reduce earnings quality and damage shareholders also investors’ benefits. In this case, audit plays a vital role in constrain earnings management, which can provide independent assurance of the credibility of financial information and contribute to efficient function of capital market allocation. Among audit services, audit fee and audit firm size are widely focused by investors and regulators. This study attempts to observe the effect of audit fee and audit firm size on earnings management. Some theories are showed at first to underlay this dissertation. According to prior studies about relationship between audit fee, audit firm size and earnings management, two hypotheses are put forward in this study. Using 634 listed companies of non-financial industries out of the total 1320 from 2011 to 2016, cross-sectional modified-Jones model is selected to calculate the discretionary accrual as proxy for earnings management. From analysis, it is found that earnings management has no significant relationship with audit fee finally. However, audit firm size is positively and significantly associated with earnings management. According to these findings, this paper also provides some recommendation to listed companies and audit firms. 2017-09-11 Dissertation (University of Nottingham only) NonPeerReviewed application/pdf en https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/45786/1/dissertation..pdf GAO, HANJI (2017) The Effect of Audit Fee and Audit Firm Size on Earnings Management. [Dissertation (University of Nottingham only)]
spellingShingle GAO, HANJI
The Effect of Audit Fee and Audit Firm Size on Earnings Management
title The Effect of Audit Fee and Audit Firm Size on Earnings Management
title_full The Effect of Audit Fee and Audit Firm Size on Earnings Management
title_fullStr The Effect of Audit Fee and Audit Firm Size on Earnings Management
title_full_unstemmed The Effect of Audit Fee and Audit Firm Size on Earnings Management
title_short The Effect of Audit Fee and Audit Firm Size on Earnings Management
title_sort effect of audit fee and audit firm size on earnings management
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/45786/