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Audit Analytics in the Financial Industry
Split into six parts, contributors explore ways to integrate Audit Analytics techniques into existing audit programs for the financial industry. Chapters include topics such as fraud risks in the credit card sector, clustering techniques, fraud and anomaly detection, and using Audit Analytics to assess risk in the lawsuit and payment processes.
eBook
Audit fee residuals: Costs or rents?
Audit fee residuals (the error term from audit fee models) are widely used in the accounting research literature. Researchers, however, have adopted contrasting views of these fee residuals. One view is that fee residuals are a combination of noise and
auditor rents
(i.e., abnormal profits), while the other view is that they are a combination of noise and
unobserved audit
costs
(including any risk premium and a normal rate of return on all factors of production). As a result, identical research findings are presently given conflicting policy interpretations. We use differences in fee residual persistence across continuing and new audit engagements to elucidate the extent to which fee residuals consist of unobserved audit costs, auditor rents, and noise elements. In a large sample of U.S. public company audit engagements, we find evidence suggesting that fee residuals largely consist of researcher-unobserved audit production costs common to all auditors. We discuss the implications of this finding for policy setters and for future auditing research.
Journal Article
City-Level Auditor Industry Specialization, Economies of Scale, and Audit Pricing
We examine the effects of city-level auditor industry specialization and scale economies on audit pricing in the United States. Using a sample of Big N clients for the 2000–2007 period, and a scale measure based on percentile rankings of the number of audit clients at the city-industry level, we document significant specialization premiums and scale discounts in both the pre- and post-Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) periods. However, the effects of industry specialization and scale economies on audit pricing are highly interactive. The negative effect of city-industry scale on audit fees obtains only for clients of specialist auditors. By contrast, clients of non-specialist auditors obtain scale discounts only when they enjoy strong bargaining power, suggesting that auditors are \"forced\" to pass on scale economies to clients with greater bargaining power.
Journal Article
Extreme Estimation Uncertainty in Fair Value Estimates: Implications for Audit Assurance
The overall complexity and estimation uncertainty inherent in financial statements have increased in recent decades; however, the related reports and services have changed very little, including the format of the balance sheet and income statement, the content in the auditor's report, and the level and nature of assurance provided on estimates. We examine estimates reported by public companies and find that fair value and other estimates based on management's subjective models and inputs contain estimation uncertainty or imprecision that is many times greater than materiality. Importantly, changes in the estimates often impact net income; consequently, the extreme estimation uncertainty also resides in measures such as earnings per share. We do not question the value audits provide to the marketplace, the importance of fair value reporting, or the ability of auditors to deploy up-to-date valuation and auditing techniques. Rather, we suggest that the convergence of relatively recent events is placing an increasingly difficult, and perhaps in some cases unrealistic, burden on auditors. We consider whether the convergence of events in regulation and standard setting may have outstripped auditors' ability to provide the level and nature of assurance currently required on estimates with extreme estimation uncertainty by auditing standards and regulators. We discuss potential changes to financial reporting and auditing standards that may improve the information provided to users and also address the concerns we raise. Finally, we suggest avenues for future research that may be fruitful in addressing how changes to standards would influence the behavior of preparers, auditors, and users. JEL Classifications: M4; M40; M41; M42. Data Availability: All data are publicly available.
Journal Article
Valuation uncertainty and analysts’ use of DCF models
Using textual analysis for a large sample of analyst reports on U.S. firms, we find that analysts are more likely to use a discounted cash flow (DCF) model and to discuss more cash flow and discount rate information for firms with more uncertainty, as measured by earnings quality and firm risks. The market reactions to target price changes based on a DCF model are stronger, particularly for firms with greater valuation uncertainty and when the analysts present more cash flow and discount rate discussions. These results indicate that the analyst valuation process reflects investors’ information demand under uncertainty and has a bearing on the informativeness of analyst research.
Journal Article
Regulatory oversight and trade-offs in earnings management: evidence from pension accounting
I develop approaches that quantify the use of discretion for the three main assumptions used for the financial reporting of defined benefit pension obligations: the expected return, the discount rate, and the compensation rate. I then apply these approaches to two regulatory events that affected a different subset of these three assumptions. Across both settings, my analyses indicate that firms reduced discretion in response to regulatory scrutiny—but only in those assumptions targeted by the regulatory event. In contrast, I find that firms increased the use of discretion in the other assumptions, consistent with a substitution effect. I also find that the use of discretion in the discount rate and compensation rate are approximately two to three times more effective at changing reported earnings than the use of discretion in the expected return. Collectively, my analyses highlight the interdependence of the three main pension assumptions and the relative weakness of the expected return as an earnings management tool.
Journal Article
Auditor Industry Specialization and Evidence of Cost Efficiencies in Homogenous Industries
This study examines the audit pricing effects when auditors specialize in industries conducive to transferable audit processes. Our results indicate that industry specialists charge incrementally lower fees in industries with homogenous operations, and particularly in industries with both homogenous operations and complex accounting practices. Moreover, we discover that audit quality is no lower for clients audited by these specialists offering fee discounts, consistent with a conclusion that the reduction in fees indicates cost efficiencies rather than lower-quality audits. Further analysis indicates that the shared economies of scale only occur in a subsample of client firms with relatively high bargaining power. When considered in conjunction with prior research using a survivorship approach, our study provides evidence that certain industries lend themselves to specialization because auditors generate cost-based competitive advantages without compromising service quality.
Journal Article
Do External Auditors Perform a Corporate Governance Role in Emerging Markets? Evidence from East Asia
In emerging markets, the agency conflicts between controlling owners and the minority shareholders are difficult to mitigate through conventional corporate control mechanisms such as boards of directors and takeovers. We examine whether external independent auditors are employed as monitors or as bonding mechanisms, or both, to alleviate the agency problems. Using a broad sample from eight East Asian economies, we document that firms with agency problems embedded in the ownership structures are more likely to employ Big 5 auditors. This relation is evident among firms that raise equity capital frequently. Consistently, firms hiring Big 5 auditors receive smaller share price discounts associated with the agency conflicts. Also, we find that Big 5 auditors take into consideration their clients' agency problems when making audit fee and audit report decisions. Taken together, these results suggest that Big 5 auditors do have a corporate governance role in emerging markets.
Journal Article
Evaluating cross-sectional forecasting models for implied cost of capital
The computation of implied cost of capital (ICC) is constrained by the lack of analyst forecasts for half of all firms. Hou et al. (J Account Econ 53:504–526,
2012
, HVZ) present a cross-sectional model to generate forecasts in order to compute ICC. However, the forecasts from the HVZ model perform worse than those from a naïve random walk model and the ICCs show anomalous correlations with risk factors. We present two parsimonious alternatives to the HVZ model: the EP model based on persistence in earnings and the RI model based on the residual income model from Feltham and Ohlson (Contemp Account Res 11:689–732,
1996
). Both models outperform the HVZ model in terms of forecast bias, accuracy, earnings response coefficients, and correlations of the ICCs with future returns and risk factors. We recommend that future research use the RI model or the EP model to generate earnings forecasts.
Journal Article