IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ids/ijcgov/v6y2015i2-3-4p217-240.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Relative bargaining power in light of the current debate on audit market regulation

Author

Listed:
  • Annette G. Köhler
  • Nicole V.S. Ratzinger-Sakel

Abstract

This study examines relative bargaining power of a continuous auditor-client relationship in the German audit market to determine whether auditors can exert their power at the expense of clients. It responds to findings published by the UK Competition Commission in 2013 which assumes audit market features to impair clients' bargaining power, resulting in adverse effects on competition. By relating bargaining power to the fee negotiation process, we treat the existence of companies with positive abnormal audit fees (with negative abnormal audit fees) over the entire period of study as an indicator for auditors' bargaining power being greater than clients' bargaining power (clients' bargaining power being greater than auditors' bargaining power) for these auditor-client relationships. Our results do not suggest that the CC's assumption, i.e., auditors' bargaining power to be greater than clients' bargaining power during a continuous auditor-client relationship, holds for the audit market segment of study.

Suggested Citation

  • Annette G. Köhler & Nicole V.S. Ratzinger-Sakel, 2015. "Relative bargaining power in light of the current debate on audit market regulation," International Journal of Corporate Governance, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 6(2/3/4), pages 217-240.
    • Handle: RePEc:ids:ijcgov:v:6:y:2015:i:2/3/4:p:217-240
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=74687
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

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

    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:ids:ijcgov:v:6:y:2015:i:2/3/4:p:217-240. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Sarah Parker (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=260 .

    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.