IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/acctfi/v61y2021i4p5025-5050.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

MD&A readability, auditor characteristics, and audit fees

Author

Listed:
  • Le Wang
  • Xiaoyan Chen
  • Xing Li
  • Gaoliang Tian

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between audit fees and MD&A readability in China. We find that audit fees generally are higher when MD&A readability is lower. However, we find Big4 auditors and industry specialist auditors do not increase audit fees when MD&As are less readable while the other auditors do. We also find that it is the content unique to the reporting firm, rather than standard industry and market content in a MD&A that affects auditor fees. Our results also support that audit risk and audit efforts are two channels through which MD&A readability affects audit fees.

Suggested Citation

  • Le Wang & Xiaoyan Chen & Xing Li & Gaoliang Tian, 2021. "MD&A readability, auditor characteristics, and audit fees," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(4), pages 5025-5050, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:acctfi:v:61:y:2021:i:4:p:5025-5050
    DOI: 10.1111/acfi.12748
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/acfi.12748
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/acfi.12748?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul C. Tetlock & Maytal Saar‐Tsechansky & Sofus Macskassy, 2008. "More Than Words: Quantifying Language to Measure Firms' Fundamentals," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(3), pages 1437-1467, June.
    2. Ertugrul, Mine & Lei, Jin & Qiu, Jiaping & Wan, Chi, 2017. "Annual Report Readability, Tone Ambiguity, and the Cost of Borrowing," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(2), pages 811-836, April.
    3. Qiao Xu & Guy Fernando & Kinsun Tam & Wei Zhang, 2019. "Financial report readability and audit fees: a simultaneous equation approach," Managerial Auditing Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 35(3), pages 345-372, November.
    4. Lo, Kin & Ramos, Felipe & Rogo, Rafael, 2017. "Earnings management and annual report readability," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 1-25.
    5. Hun‐Tong Tan & Elaine Ying Wang & Bo Zhou, 2014. "When the Use of Positive Language Backfires: The Joint Effect of Tone, Readability, and Investor Sophistication on Earnings Judgments," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(1), pages 273-302, March.
    6. Simunic, Da, 1980. "The Pricing Of Audit Services - Theory And Evidence," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(1), pages 161-190.
    7. Connie L. Becker & Mark L. Defond & James Jiambalvo & K.R. Subramanyam, 1998. "The Effect of Audit Quality on Earnings Management," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(1), pages 1-24, March.
    8. Mark H. Taylor, 2000. "The Effects of Industry Specialization on Auditors' Inherent Risk Assessments and Confidence Judgements," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 17(4), pages 693-712, December.
    9. Allen, Franklin & Qian, Jun & Qian, Meijun, 2005. "Law, finance, and economic growth in China," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 57-116, July.
    10. Chen†Lung Chin & Hsin†Yi Chi, 2009. "Reducing Restatements with Increased Industry Expertise," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(3), pages 729-765, September.
    11. Li, Feng, 2008. "Annual report readability, current earnings, and earnings persistence," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(2-3), pages 221-247, August.
    12. DeAngelo, Linda Elizabeth, 1981. "Auditor size and audit quality," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 183-199, December.
    13. Kathleen Weiss Hanley, 2010. "The Information Content of IPO Prospectuses," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(7), pages 2821-2864, July.
    14. Bloomfield, Robert, 2008. "Discussion of "Annual report readability, current earnings, and earnings persistence"," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(2-3), pages 248-252, August.
    15. Xing Li & Xia Chen & Baolei Qi & Gaoliang Tian, 2020. "Employee quality and audit fee: evidence from China," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 60(5), pages 4533-4566, December.
    16. Peter M. Clarkson & Jennifer L. Kao & Gordon D. Richardson, 1999. "Evidence That Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) is a Part of a Firm's Overall Disclosure Package," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 16(1), pages 111-134, March.
    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. Li, Jing & Li, Nan & Xia, Tongshui & Guo, Jinjin, 2023. "Textual analysis and detection of financial fraud: Evidence from Chinese manufacturing firms," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    2. Shuolei Xu & Fangjun Wang & Charles P. Cullinan & Nanyan Dong, 2022. "Corporate Tax Avoidance and Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure Readability: Evidence from China," Australian Accounting Review, CPA Australia, vol. 32(2), pages 267-289, June.
    3. Sun, Li, 2023. "Asset redeployability and readability of annual report," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).

    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. Pinto, Inês & Morais, Ana Isabel & Quick, Reiner, 2020. "The impact of the precision of accounting standards on the expanded auditor’s report in the European Union," Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, Elsevier, vol. 40(C).
    2. Aditya Aji Prabhawa & Iman Harymawan, 2022. "Readability of Financial Footnotes, Audit Fees, and Risk Management Committee," Risks, MDPI, vol. 10(9), pages 1-21, August.
    3. Nicolás Gambetta & Laura Sierra García & María Antonia García Benau & Josefina Novejarque Civera, 2022. "The informative value of Key Audit Matters in the audit report," Documentos de Investigación 129, Universidad ORT Uruguay. Facultad de Administración y Ciencias Sociales.
    4. Muhammad Farhan Malik & Yuan George Shan & Jamie Yixing Tong, 2022. "Do auditors price litigious tone?," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(S1), pages 1715-1760, April.
    5. Xiong, Hao & Hou, Fei & Li, Hanwen & Wang, Huabing, 2020. "Does rice farming shape audit quality: Evidence from signing auditors level analysis," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 403-420.
    6. Ahsan Habib & Mostafa Monzur Hasan, 2020. "Business strategies and annual report readability," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 60(3), pages 2513-2547, September.
    7. Mousa, Gehan A. & Elamir, Elsayed A.H. & Hussainey, Khaled, 2022. "The effect of annual report narratives on the cost of capital in the Middle East and North Africa: A machine learning approach," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    8. Huang, Pingping & Jiao, Yuehua & Li, Sihai, 2022. "Impact of internal control quality on the information content of social responsibility reports: A study based on text similarity—Evidence from China," International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, Elsevier, vol. 45(C).
    9. Hasan, Mostafa Monzur & Habib, Ahsan, 2020. "Readability of narrative disclosures, and corporate liquidity and payout policies," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    10. Xu, Qiao & Fernando, Guy D. & Tam, Kinsun, 2018. "Executive age and the readability of financial reports," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 70-81.
    11. Lauren Cohen & Christopher Malloy & Quoc Nguyen, 2018. "Lazy Prices," NBER Working Papers 25084, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Nicolás Gambetta & Laura Sierra‐García & María Antonia García‐Benau & Josefina Novejarque‐Civera, 2023. "The Informative Value of Key Audit Matters in the Audit Report: Understanding the Impact of the Audit Firm and KAM Type," Australian Accounting Review, CPA Australia, vol. 33(2), pages 114-134, June.
    13. Muhammad Nadeem, 2022. "Board Gender Diversity and Managerial Obfuscation: Evidence from the Readability of Narrative Disclosure in 10-K Reports," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 179(1), pages 153-177, August.
    14. Senave, Elseline & Jans, Mieke J. & Srivastava, Rajendra P., 2023. "The application of text mining in accounting," International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    15. Fahd Alduais & Nashat Ali Almasria & Abeer Samara & Ali Masadeh, 2022. "Conciseness, Financial Disclosure, and Market Reaction: A Textual Analysis of Annual Reports in Listed Chinese Companies," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-22, November.
    16. Kelvin K. F. Law & Lillian F. Mills, 2015. "Taxes and Financial Constraints: Evidence from Linguistic Cues," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(4), pages 777-819, September.
    17. de Souza, João Antônio Salvador & Rissatti, Jean Carlo & Rover, Suliani & Borba, José Alonso, 2019. "The linguistic complexities of narrative accounting disclosure on financial statements: An analysis based on readability characteristics," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 59-74.
    18. Kong, Dongmin & Shi, Lu & Zhang, Fan, 2021. "Explain or conceal? Causal language intensity in annual report and stock price crash risk," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 715-725.
    19. Xingqiang Du, 2019. "Does CEO-Auditor Dialect Sharing Impair Pre-IPO Audit Quality? Evidence from China," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 156(3), pages 699-735, May.
    20. Mahdi Salehi & Grzegorz Zimon & Hayder Adnan Hashim & Ryszard Jędrzejczak & Adam Sadowski, 2022. "Accounting Quality and Audit Attributes on the Stock Price Crashes in an Emerging Market," Risks, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-24, October.

    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:bla:acctfi:v:61:y:2021:i:4:p:5025-5050. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaanzea.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.