IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/acctfi/v62y2022is1p1715-1760.html

Do auditors price litigious tone?

Author

Listed:
  • Muhammad Farhan Malik
  • Yuan George Shan
  • Jamie Yixing Tong

Abstract

We investigate whether audit fees are shaped by litigious tone. Using a sample of listed firms in the US, we find litigious tone in 10‐K reports is associated with higher audit fees. This finding remains robust when we account for sample selection bias, firm‐level unobserved heterogeneity effects, endogeneity concerns, or when subsections in 10‐K reports are analysed. In addition, we document the relationship is of a lower magnitude among high‐risk client firms, suggesting that auditors are already cautious when auditing high‐risk clients. This suggests that auditors rely less on litigious tone in determining audit fees when faced with high‐risk clients.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:acctfi:v:62:y:2022:i:s1:p:1715-1760
    DOI: 10.1111/acfi.12837
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/acfi.12837
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/acfi.12837?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. Jaeschke, Reemda & Lopatta, Kerstin & Yi, Cheong, 2018. "Managers’ use of language in corrupt firms’ financial disclosures: Evidence from FCPA violators," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 170-192.
    2. Habib, Ahsan & Jiang, Haiyan & Bhuiyan, Md. Borhan Uddin & Islam, Ainul, 2014. "Litigation risk, financial reporting and auditing: A survey of the literature," Research in Accounting Regulation, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 145-163.
    3. Rick Antle & Elizabeth Gordon & Ganapathi Narayanamoorthy & Ling Zhou, 2006. "The joint determination of audit fees, non-audit fees, and abnormal accruals," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 27(3), pages 235-266, November.
    4. Foster, Benjamin P. & Shastri, Trim, 2016. "Determinants of going concern opinions and audit fees for development stage enterprises," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 68-84.
    5. 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.
    6. Francis, J & Philbrick, D & Schipper, K, 1994. "Shareholder Litigation And Corporate Disclosures," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(2), pages 137-164.
    7. Tim Loughran & Bill Mcdonald, 2016. "Textual Analysis in Accounting and Finance: A Survey," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 54(4), pages 1187-1230, September.
    8. Simunic, Da, 1980. "The Pricing Of Audit Services - Theory And Evidence," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(1), pages 161-190.
    9. Chalmers, Keryn & Godfrey, Jayne M., 2004. "Reputation costs: the impetus for voluntary derivative financial instrument reporting," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 95-125, February.
    10. Joseph F. Brazel & Keith L. Jones & Mark F. Zimbelman, 2009. "Using Nonfinancial Measures to Assess Fraud Risk," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 47(5), pages 1135-1166, December.
    11. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
    12. Lynnette Purda & David Skillicorn, 2015. "Accounting Variables, Deception, and a Bag of Words: Assessing the Tools of Fraud Detection," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 32(3), pages 1193-1223, September.
    13. Graham, John R. & Harvey, Campbell R. & Rajgopal, Shiva, 2005. "The economic implications of corporate financial reporting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1-3), pages 3-73, December.
    14. David B. Bryan & Terry W. Mason, 2020. "Independent director reputation incentives, accruals quality and audit fees," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(7-8), pages 982-1011, July.
    15. Carcello, Jv & Palmrose, Zv, 1994. "Auditor Litigation And Modified Reporting On Bankrupt Clients," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32, pages 1-30.
    16. Renee Weiss & John Shon, 2017. "Information Asymmetry and Voluntary SFAS 157 Fair Value Disclosures by Bank Holding Companies During the 2007 Financial Crisis," Accounting Perspectives, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 16(3), pages 169-203, September.
    17. Rong Yang & Yang Yu & Manlu Liu & Kean Wu, 2018. "Corporate Risk Disclosure and Audit Fee: A Text Mining Approach," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(3), pages 583-594, May.
    18. Thomas Schleicher & Martin Walker, 2010. "Bias in the tone of forward‐looking narratives," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(4), pages 371-390.
    19. Barakat, Ahmed & Ashby, Simon & Fenn, Paul & Bryce, Cormac, 2019. "Operational risk and reputation in financial institutions: Does media tone make a difference?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 1-24.
    20. Holder, Anthony & Karim, Khondkar & Lin, Karen (Jingrong) & Pinsker, Robert, 2016. "Do material weaknesses in information technology-related internal controls affect firms' 8-K filing timeliness and compliance?," International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 26-43.
    21. King, Gary & Nielsen, Richard, 2019. "Why Propensity Scores Should Not Be Used for Matching," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(4), pages 435-454, October.
    22. Arthur Lewbel, 1997. "Constructing Instruments for Regressions with Measurement Error when no Additional Data are Available, with an Application to Patents and R&D," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(5), pages 1201-1214, September.
    23. Dain C. Donelson & Christopher G. Yust, 2014. "Litigation Risk and Agency Costs: Evidence from Nevada Corporate Law," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 57(3), pages 747-780.
    24. Jaywon Lee & Jongwon Park, 2019. "The Impact of Audit Committee Financial Expertise on Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) Tone," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(1), pages 129-150, January.
    25. Zhan Shu, Susan, 2000. "Auditor resignations: clientele effects and legal liability," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 173-205, April.
    26. Hainmueller, Jens & Xu, Yiqing, 2013. "ebalance: A Stata Package for Entropy Balancing," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 54(i07).
    27. Engelmann, Kathleen & Cornell, Bradford, 1988. "Measuring the Cost of Corporate Litigation: Five Case Studies," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 17(2), pages 377-399, June.
    28. Mitchell A. Petersen, 2009. "Estimating Standard Errors in Finance Panel Data Sets: Comparing Approaches," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(1), pages 435-480, January.
    29. Bakarich, Kathleen M. & Hossain, Mahmud & Hossain, Mahmud & Weintrop, Joseph, 2019. "Different time, different tone: Company life cycle," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 69-86.
    30. Hai Lu & Gordon Richardson & Steven Salterio, 2011. "Direct and Indirect Effects of Internal Control Weaknesses on Accrual Quality: Evidence from a Unique Canadian Regulatory Setting," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(2), pages 675-707, June.
    31. Rick Antle & Elizabeth Gordon & Ganapathi Narayanamoorthy & Ling Zhou, 2002. "The Joint Determination of Audit Fees, Non-Audit Fees, and Abnormal Accruals," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2502, Yale School of Management, revised 02 May 2006.
    32. Kearney, Colm & Liu, Sha, 2014. "Textual sentiment in finance: A survey of methods and models," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 171-185.
    33. 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.
    34. Kerstin Lopatta & Mario Albert Gloger & Reemda Jaeschke, 2017. "Can Language Predict Bankruptcy? The Explanatory Power of Tone in 10‐K Filings," Accounting Perspectives, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 16(4), pages 315-343, December.
    35. Kelvin K. F. Law & Lillian F. Mills, 2015. "Taxes and Financial Constraints: Evidence from Linguistic Cues," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 53(4), pages 777-819, September.
    36. Rogers, Jonathan L. & Van Buskirk, Andrew, 2009. "Shareholder litigation and changes in disclosure behavior," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1-2), pages 136-156, March.
    37. Joel F. Houston & Chen Lin & Wensi Xie, 2018. "Shareholder Protection and the Cost of Capital," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 61(4), pages 677-710.
    38. Tim Loughran & Bill Mcdonald, 2011. "When Is a Liability Not a Liability? Textual Analysis, Dictionaries, and 10‐Ks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(1), pages 35-65, February.
    39. Angela K. Davis & Isho Tama†Sweet, 2012. "Managers’ Use of Language Across Alternative Disclosure Outlets: Earnings Press Releases versus MD&A," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(3), pages 804-837, September.
    40. 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.
    41. Ettredge, Michael & Fuerherm, Elizabeth Emeigh & Li, Chan, 2014. "Fee pressure and audit quality," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 247-263.
    42. DeFond, Mark & Zhang, Jieying, 2014. "A review of archival auditing research," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 275-326.
    43. Karl Hackenbrack & W. Robert Knechel, 1997. "Resource Allocation Decisions in Audit Engagements," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 14(3), pages 481-499, September.
    44. Mari Paananen & Emmeli Runesson & Niuosha Samani, 2021. "Time to clean up environmental liabilities reporting: disclosures, media exposure and market implications," Accounting Forum, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(1), pages 85-116, January.
    45. John D. Lyon & Michael W. Maher, 2005. "The Importance of Business Risk in Setting Audit Fees: Evidence from Cases of Client Misconduct," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(1), pages 133-151, 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. Kiridaran Kanagaretnam & Wen Li & Guifeng Shi & Zejiang Zhou, 2025. "Ambiguity of tone in annual reports and bank risk taking," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 65(1), pages 935-970, March.
    2. Marwa Elnahass & Yousry Ahmed & Vu Quang Trinh, 2025. "Empowering Women to Lead Cybersecurity: The Effect of Female Executives on Disclosure Sentiment," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(4), pages 3368-3394, October.

    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. 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).
    2. Kiridaran Kanagaretnam & Wen Li & Guifeng Shi & Zejiang Zhou, 2025. "Ambiguity of tone in annual reports and bank risk taking," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 65(1), pages 935-970, March.
    3. Bakarich, Kathleen M. & Hossain, Mahmud & Hossain, Mahmud & Weintrop, Joseph, 2019. "Different time, different tone: Company life cycle," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 69-86.
    4. Chen, Huimin (Amy) & Francis, Bill B. & Shen, Yinjie (Victor) & Wu, Qiang, 2024. "The impact of hedge fund activism on audit pricing," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(2).
    5. Cano-Rodríguez, Manuel & Moreno, Alonso, 2026. "Religion and the readability of textual financial disclosures," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    6. 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.
    7. Bassyouny, Hesham & Abdelfattah, Tarek & Tao, Lei, 2022. "Narrative disclosure tone: A review and areas for future research," Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    8. Hossain, Amir & Bose, Sudipta & Shamsuddin, Abul, 2025. "Do integrated report readability and tone convey value relevant information? International evidence," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(3).
    9. Jun Qi & Qinwei Chi & Ni Yang & Junyan Ouyang, 2023. "The Impact of the Tone of a Prospectus on IPO Underpricing: Evidence from China," Australian Accounting Review, CPA Australia, vol. 33(4), pages 375-390, December.
    10. 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.
    11. Chen, Jean Jinghan & Song, Peiyang & Loi, Fai Lim, 2024. "Strategic forward-looking nonearnings disclosure and overinvestment," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(6).
    12. Allee, Kristian D. & Do, Chuong & Sterin, Mikhail, 2021. "Product market competition, disclosure framing, and casting in earnings conference calls," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(1).
    13. Jaeschke, Reemda & Lopatta, Kerstin & Yi, Cheong, 2018. "Managers’ use of language in corrupt firms’ financial disclosures: Evidence from FCPA violators," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 170-192.
    14. Pratik Goel & Oveis Madadian & Wouter Torsin, 2025. "Tone Management and Litigation Concerns in CEOs’ Early Years," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 61(2), pages 462-497, June.
    15. John Berns & Patty Bick & Ryan Flugum & Reza Houston, 2022. "Do changes in MD&A section tone predict investment behavior?," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 57(1), pages 129-153, February.
    16. Li, Xiaoxi & Zhong, Qinger & Liu, Shasha, 2025. "Random inspections and corporate information disclosure," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    17. S. M. R. K. Samarakoon & R. K. Mishra & Rudra P. Pradhan & Manju Jayakumar & Tapan P. Bagchi, 2025. "Annual report readability, ESG disclosure, and risk perspectives of Indian firms: the mediating role of corporate governance and earnings management," International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 22(3), pages 678-705, September.
    18. Huimin (Amy) Chen & Bill B. Francis & Tahseen Hasan & Qiang Wu, 2022. "Does corporate culture impact audit pricing? Evidence from textual analysis," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(5-6), pages 778-806, May.
    19. Sharad Asthana & Inder Khurana & K. K. Raman, 2019. "Fee competition among Big 4 auditors and audit quality," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 403-438, February.
    20. Kanagaretnam, Kiridaran & Mawani, Amin & Shi, Guifeng & Zhou, Zejiang, 2020. "Impact of social capital on tone ambiguity in banks’ 10-K filings," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(C).

    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:62:y:2022:i:s1:p:1715-1760. 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.