Top management team incentive dispersion and audit fees

Abstract

We study whether heterogeneity in pay-performance sensitivities (PPS) across top management team (TMT) members influences audit fees. Evidence from current literature reveals that the heterogeneity in PPS among TMT affects TMT managers’ motivation to coordinate their activities to manipulate earnings. Since the quality of earnings lowers auditors’ financial reporting risk, we posit that audit fees will be lower when dispersion in the PPS among TMT is high. We demonstrate that audit fees are negatively linked with dispersion in PPS among TMT members. This finding is robust to numerous sensitivity testing. Overall, our findings suggest that firms benefit from the heterogeneity in PPS among TMT members in the form of lower audit fees.