The Demand for Audit in Private Firms: Recent Large-Sample Evidence from the UK
49 Pages Posted: 26 Jan 2013
Date Written: January 25, 2013
Abstract
Although theory suggests that companies would rationally select into audit even if it were not a legal requirement, many countries impose mandatory audits. This is arguably due to an audit having elements of a public good, which may result in not enough audits being purchased without regulatory intervention. The mandatory nature of public company audit has created problems for researchers wishing to investigate the demand for voluntary audit. Recent events in the UK, however, have provided such an environment. In the UK, private companies must publicly file financial statements and, until recently, they had also to be audited. However, this requirement has now been relaxed for many private companies. We are therefore able to examine the determinants of voluntary audit in a large sample of companies for which we have financial statement data.
We analyse a sample of 6,274 recently exempt companies, following them for three years post-exemption. We use agency theory and prior evidence to generate our hypotheses and examine them using a more comprehensive set of explanatory variables than has previously been available in the literature. Our results indicate that companies are more likely to purchase voluntary audits if they have greater agency costs, are riskier, wish to raise capital, purchase non-audit services from their auditor, and exhibited greater demand for audit assurance in the mandatory audit regime. We also document a trend away from audit over time. Overall, our results strongly support the idea that companies choose to be audited when it is in their interests to do so.
Keywords: audit exemption, voluntary audit, private companies
JEL Classification: M40
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
The Value of Verification in Debt Financing: Evidence from Private U.S. Firms
-
Voluntary Audits and the Cost of Debt Capital for Privately Held Firms: Korean Evidence
By Jeong-bon Kim, Dan A. Simunic, ...
-
Voluntary Audit and the Cost of Debt Capital for Privately Held Firms: Korean Evidence
By Dan A. Simunic, Jeong-bon Kim, ...
-
What Do We Learn from Two New Accounting-Based Stock Market Anomalies?
By Sudipta Basu
-
Do Private Company Targets that Hire Big 4 Auditors Receive Higher Proceeds?
By Gus De Franco, Ilanit Gavious, ...
-
By Gavin Cassar, Ken Cavalluzzo, ...
-
Selective Auditor Rotation and Earnings Management: Evidence from Korea
By Jeong-bon Kim, Chung-ki Min, ...