We conduct an archival study to examine the effect of audit experience on audit fees and
audit quality. Using the unique data from China, we find that the overall audit experience
of two signees of the audit report is positively associated with audit fees, and is negatively
associated with absolute discretionary accruals after controlling for other personal characteristics
of the lead auditors, audit firm characteristics, and client characteristics. Our findings suggest that more experienced CPAs provide higher quality audit services than
less experienced CPAs.
Prior research on audit experience focuses on behavioral studies that are conducted by
running experiments. These studies only provide experimental and task-based results.
Based on those results, it is not possible to determine how audit experience affects the complete
audit engagement. Thus, archival evidence could complement the prior behavioral
studies in an important way, but obtaining personal characteristics of auditors in a large
sample has been difficult. Using unique data from China, we are able to help fill this void
in the literature. Furthermore, we extend the research on audit partners by considering the
incremental effects of gender, education, engagement tenure, industry specialization, and
client importance after controlling for overall audit experience. Overall, our results suggest
that the lead auditors’ personal characteristics may serve as a signal of the level of care
that will be exercised during the audit process. In this way, personal characteristics help
mitigate adverse selection problems for the client in a setting where audit quality is not
fully observable, that is, a credence good
Our study complements the work of Gul et al. (2013). Although they examine the effects
of demographic characteristics of Chinese auditors at an individual level, we focus on the
average effect across individual auditors. Finally, our study has implications for the
recently announced Chinese regulation that would require the localization of Big 4 offices
in China. Our results suggest that audit quality increases with the experience of Chinese
auditors. Thus, giving Chinese auditors more experience by increasing their involvement in
Big 4 offices will benefit auditing in China in the long run