IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/euract/v6y1998i3p355-375.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Auditor independence, incomplete contracts and the role of legal liability

Author

Listed:
  • Daron Acemoglu
  • Miles Gietzmann

Abstract

We develop a model in which there is conflict of interest between the management and the shareholders of an organization. Incompleteness of contracts prevents a simple contracting solution to this problem. We suggest that auditors can play a role in aligning the conflicting interests. However, this result is dependent on auditors maintaining independence from management. Again however, incompletenesses in contracting causes difficulties because it may be hard to ensure that auditors maintain this required independence. In this context, the imposition of potential legal liability (punishment) on the auditor, may be an important commitment mechanism for the auditors, making it credible that they will not collude with the management. In order to give our model institutional structure we study how this collusion may take place through the reappointment concerns of the auditor. In the reappointment game, we consider how legal liability levels could be chosen so that it becomes credible to expect that auditors will not implicitly collude with management and provide a low duty of care.

Suggested Citation

  • Daron Acemoglu & Miles Gietzmann, 1998. "Auditor independence, incomplete contracts and the role of legal liability," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(3), pages 355-375.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:euract:v:6:y:1998:i:3:p:355-375
    DOI: 10.1080/713764727
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/713764727
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/713764727?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Milgrom, Paul R, 1988. "Employment Contracts, Influence Activities, and Efficient Organization Design," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(1), pages 42-60, February.
    2. Baiman, S & Evans, Jh & Nagarajan, Nj, 1991. "Collusion In Auditing," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1), pages 1-18.
    3. Oliver Hart & John Moore, 1990. "A Theory of Corporate Financial Structure Based on the Seniority of Claims," STICERD - Theoretical Economics Paper Series 217, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    4. Acemoglu, D., 1994. "Corporate Control and Balance of Powers," Working papers 94-22, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
    5. Allen, Franklin & Gale, Douglas, 1992. "Measurement Distortion and Missing Contingencies in Optimal Contracts," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 2(1), pages 1-26, January.
    6. Acemoglu, Daron, 1994. "A Dynamic Model of Collusion," CEPR Discussion Papers 1027, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Dye, Ronald A., 1991. "Informationally motivated auditor replacement," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 347-374, December.
    8. Simunic, Da, 1984. "Auditing, Consulting, And Auditor Independence," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(2), pages 679-702.
    9. Melumad, Nd & Thoman, L, 1990. "On Auditors And The Courts In An Adverse Selection Setting," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 77-120.
    10. Kathryn E. Spier, 1992. "Incomplete Contracts and Signalling," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 23(3), pages 432-443, Autumn.
    11. Kofman, Fred & Lawarree, Jacques, 1993. "Collusion in Hierarchical Agency," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(3), pages 629-656, May.
    12. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    13. Hart, Oliver, 1995. "Firms, Contracts, and Financial Structure," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198288817, Decembrie.
    14. repec:cep:stitep:/1990/217 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Tirole, Jean, 1986. "Hierarchies and Bureaucracies: On the Role of Collusion in Organizations," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 2(2), pages 181-214, Fall.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stefan Sundgren, 1998. "Auditor choices and auditor reporting practices: evidence from Finnish small firms," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(3), pages 441-465.
    2. Ann Vanstraelen, 2000. "Impact of renewable long-term audit mandates on audit quality," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(3), pages 419-442.
    3. Steven Maijoor & Roger Meuwissen & Luc Quadackers, 2000. "The effects of national institutions on audit research: evidence from Europe and North America," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(4), pages 569-587.
    4. Clive Lennox, 1999. "Non-audit fees, disclosure and audit quality," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(2), pages 239-252.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kouroche Vafaï, 1999. "A Theory of Abuse of Authority in Hierarchies," CIRANO Working Papers 99s-07, CIRANO.
    2. Arrunada, Benito & Paz-Ares, Candido, 1997. "Mandatory rotation of company auditors: A critical examination," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 31-61, March.
    3. Vafai, Kouroche, 2002. "Preventing abuse of authority in hierarchies," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 20(8), pages 1143-1166, October.
    4. Mehrdad Vahabi, 1999. "From Walrasian General Equilibrium to Incomplete Contracts: Making Sense of Institutions," Post-Print halshs-03704424, HAL.
    5. DeFond, Mark & Zhang, Jieying, 2014. "A review of archival auditing research," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 275-326.
    6. Kofman, Fred & Lawarree, Jacques, 1996. "On the optimality of allowing collusion," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 383-407, September.
    7. Gilles Hilary & Sterling Huang, 2023. "Trust and Contracting: Evidence from Church Sex Scandals," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 182(2), pages 421-442, January.
    8. De Chiara, Alessandro & Livio, Luca, 2017. "The threat of corruption and the optimal supervisory task," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 172-186.
    9. Angelo Baglioni & Luca Colombo, 2009. "Managers’ Compensation And Misreporting: A Costly State Verification Approach," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 47(2), pages 278-289, April.
    10. Antoine Faure-Grimaud & Jean-Jacques Laffont & David Martimort, 2000. "A Theory of Supervision with Endogenous Transaction Costs," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 1(2), pages 231-263, November.
    11. Agnieszka Rusinowska & Vassili Vergopoulos, 2020. "Ingratiation and Favoritism in Organizations," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 176(3), pages 413-445.
    12. Phalippou, Ludovic & Rauch, Christian & Umber, Marc, 2018. "Private equity portfolio company fees," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(3), pages 559-585.
    13. Christine Pochet, 2000. "Audit d'acquisition et expertise indépendante dans les opérations de fusions-acquisitions:le cas Aérospatiale-Matra," Revue Finance Contrôle Stratégie, revues.org, vol. 3(3), pages 181-209, September.
    14. Raffaele Fiocco & Mario Gilli, 2016. "Bargaining and collusion in a regulatory relationship," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 117(2), pages 93-116, March.
    15. Daniel Barron & Jin Li & Michał Zator, 2022. "Morale and Debt Dynamics," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(6), pages 4496-4516, June.
    16. Annamaria Menichini, 2000. "Third parties as an incentive to comply," CSEF Working Papers 41, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy, revised 01 Jan 2006.
    17. Yanhua ZHANG, 2005. "Collusion and Commitment in Bank Bailout," Industrial Organization 0509011, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. A. Menichini & P. Simmons, "undated". "Can Liars Ever Prosper," Discussion Papers 02/10, Department of Economics, University of York.
    19. Villadsen, Bente, 1995. "Communication and delegation in collusive agencies," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2-3), pages 315-344, April.
    20. Oriana Bandiera & Iwan Barankay & Imran Rasul, 2009. "Social Connections and Incentives in the Workplace: Evidence From Personnel Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(4), pages 1047-1094, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:euract:v:6:y:1998:i:3:p:355-375. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/REAR20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.