IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uct/uconnp/2012-20.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Auditor Preference

Author

Listed:
  • Karl Hackenbrack

    (Vanderbilt University)

  • Mikhael Shor

    (University of Connecticut)

Abstract

We analyze theoretically and empirically the effect of preference policies, which favor some auditors over others for reasons unrelated to the audit. For example, an auditee may prefer minority-owned auditors, all else equal. We construct an analytical model of the competitive bidding process for audit services. We show that preference policies can sometimes improve the audit procurement process by encouraging price concessions from non-preferenced auditors. We test model predictions in a setting amenable to empirical identification of preference; many municipalities prefer local firms over more distant firms. We find strong evidence of local preference, with local firms earning a 13 percent fee premium over non-local firms. We show that audit fees depend not only on the winning firm's capabilities but also crucially on the winning firm's incremental capabilities over the next best alternative. Lastly, we identify conditions under which preference policies benefit audit procurement outcomes. JEL Classification: M42, D44, M48, H83 Key words: audit markets, auditor selection, competitive bidding, local preference

Suggested Citation

  • Karl Hackenbrack & Mikhael Shor, 2012. "Auditor Preference," Working papers 2012-20, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:uct:uconnp:2012-20
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://media.economics.uconn.edu/working/2012-20.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tim Pearson & Greg Trompeter, 1994. "Competition in the Market for Audit Services: The Effect of Supplier Concentration on Audit Fees," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 11(1), pages 115-135, June.
    2. Sattar A. Mansi & William F. Maxwell & Darius P. Miller, 2004. "Does Auditor Quality and Tenure Matter to Investors? Evidence from the Bond Market," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(4), pages 755-793, September.
    3. Burguet Roberto & Perry Martin K, 2007. "Bribery and Favoritism by Auctioneers in Sealed-Bid Auctions," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 1-27, June.
    4. repec:hal:journl:hal-02501107 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Vlad Mares & Mikhael Shor, 2008. "Industry concentration in common value auctions: theory and evidence," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 35(1), pages 37-56, April.
    6. Mougeot, Michel & Naegelen, Florence, 2005. "A political economy analysis of preferential public procurement policies," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 483-501, June.
    7. Plum, M, 1992. "Characterization and Computation of Nash-Equilibria for Auctions with Incomplete Information," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 20(4), pages 393-418.
    8. Cantillon, Estelle, 2008. "The effect of bidders' asymmetries on expected revenue in auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 1-25, January.
    9. Ettredge, M & Greenberg, R, 1990. "Determinants Of Fee Cutting On Initial Audit Engagements," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 198-210.
    10. Todd Kaplan & Shmuel Zamir, 2012. "Asymmetric first-price auctions with uniform distributions: analytic solutions to the general case," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 50(2), pages 269-302, June.
    11. Roberto Burguet & Martin K. Perry, 2009. "Preferred suppliers in auction markets," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 40(2), pages 283-295, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Lorentziadis, Panos L., 2016. "Optimal bidding in auctions from a game theory perspective," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 248(2), pages 347-371.
    2. Bobkova, Nina, 2020. "Asymmetric budget constraints in a first-price auction," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    3. Timothy Hubbard & René Kirkegaard & Harry Paarsch, 2013. "Using Economic Theory to Guide Numerical Analysis: Solving for Equilibria in Models of Asymmetric First-Price Auctions," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 42(2), pages 241-266, August.
    4. Kirkegaard, René, 2009. "Asymmetric first price auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(4), pages 1617-1635, July.
    5. Chaturvedi, Aadhaar, 2015. "Procurement auctions with capacity constrained suppliers," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 247(3), pages 987-995.
    6. Corbella, Silvano & Florio, Cristina & Gotti, Giorgio & Mastrolia, Stacy A., 2015. "Audit firm rotation, audit fees and audit quality: The experience of Italian public companies," Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 46-66.
    7. Arieh Gavious & Yizhaq Minchuk, 2014. "Ranking asymmetric auctions," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 43(2), pages 369-393, May.
    8. DeFond, Mark & Zhang, Jieying, 2014. "A review of archival auditing research," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 275-326.
    9. Huang, He & Li, Zhipeng, 2015. "Procurement auctions with ex-ante endogenous bribery," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 111-117.
    10. Rene Kirkegaard, 2005. "A Simple Approach to Analyzing Asymmetric First Price Auctions," Working Papers 0504, Brock University, Department of Economics, revised Nov 2005.
    11. Wouter Dutillieux & Donald Stokes & Marleen Willekens & Gary Monroe, 2013. "Strategic pricing by Big 4 audit firms in private client segments," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 53(4), pages 961-994, December.
    12. Miguel Minutti‐Meza, 2013. "Does Auditor Industry Specialization Improve Audit Quality?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(4), pages 779-817, September.
    13. Hanming Fang & Stephen Morris, 2012. "Multidimensional Private Value Auctions," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Robust Mechanism Design The Role of Private Information and Higher Order Beliefs, chapter 9, pages 319-356, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    14. Barbosa, Klenio & Boyer, Pierre C., 2021. "Discrimination in Dynamic Procurement Design with Learning-by-doing," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    15. Vivien Beattie & Alan Goodacre & Ken Pratt & Joanna Stevenson, 2001. "The determinants of audit fees—evidence from the voluntary sector," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(4), pages 243-274.
    16. Sanyyam Khurana, 2020. "Asymmetric auctions with risk averse preferences," Working papers 304, Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics.
    17. Helene Mass & Nicolas Fugger & Vitali Gretschko & Achim Wambach, 2020. "Imitation Perfection—A Simple Rule to Prevent Discrimination in Procurement," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 189-245, August.
    18. Hikmet Gunay & Xin Meng & Mark Nagelberg, 2012. "Reserve Price When Bidders are Asymmetric," ISER Discussion Paper 0849, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    19. Thomas, Charles J., 2011. "Vertical mergers in procurement markets," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 200-209, March.
    20. Patrick Velte & Carl-Christian Freidank, 2015. "The link between in- and external rotation of the auditor and the quality of financial accounting and external audit," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 225-246, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    audit markets; auditor selection; competitive bidding; local preference;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M42 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Auditing
    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions
    • M48 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • H83 - Public Economics - - Miscellaneous Issues - - - Public Administration

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:uct:uconnp:2012-20. 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: Mark McConnel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deuctus.html .

    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.