【作者】 邹颖；

【导师】 马永强；

【作者基本信息】 西南财经大学 ， 财务管理， 2012， 硕士

【副题名】来自我国A股上市公司的经验证据

【摘要】 自1980年中国恢复注册会计师制度以来,审计行业经历了恢复重建、脱钩改制和规模扩张等阶段,在政府和相关机构的推动下,审计质量得到了明显的提高。曾有学者对我国2001年以后注册会计师的审计质量做出了这样的统计：CPA每一元审计收费带来约470元的纠错成效,成功阻止了180多家公司通过盈余管理摆脱ST帽子,公布了700多家公司的违规行为,避免了约5500亿元的股市泡沫,追回了180多亿元的国家税金,调整的利润至少可以让“神六”上天11次。这表明脱钩改制完成以后,我国会计师事务所真正走出行政垄断,改善了审计质量。另一方面,随着我国股票发行制度的转变,上市公司数量的增多,监管体制和法律环境的完善,股票“卖方市场”的局面一去不复返,投资者变得更加理性,有再融资需求的上市公司越来越注重信息披露质量,试图通过增加信启、披露数量和增强信息披露质量来降低信息不对称风险,吸引潜在投资者,达到降低股权融资成本的目的,这一时期,独立审计的经济价值开始逐渐显现出来,在此背景下,研究审计质量的经济后果必要而有意义。虽然目前我国审计市场呈现出低度集中,高度竞争的特点,但也逐渐形成了以“四大”和国内四大为主体的审计市场结构。相关学者的研究表明目前我国事务所的审计质量存在系统性的差异(蔡春、黄益建、赵莎,2005；陈汉文、王艳艳,2006等),因此,企业可以通过选择不同质量的审计师来向市场传递有效的信号,影响投资者的决策和预期报酬率,这就为本文探讨审计质量与权益资本成本的关系奠定了良好的制度基础。审计质量的高低能否影响企业的权益资本成本?在我国特殊的体制环境下,审计质量对国有企业和非国有企业的影响又是否存在差异?本文力图解答这两个问题。本文希望通过对审计质量与权益资本成本关系的研究来考察作为资本市场净化器和信息防火墙的独立审计,是否真正发挥了作用,以期验证独立审计的信息价值,并试图通过探讨在不同产权性质企业中两者关系的差异来更好地解释我国的特殊情况,从而为上市公司的事务所选择行为和相关机构的准则制定提供一些启示和参考。审计质量包含审计师监督力量和审计师声誉两个维度,它们分别通过影响上市公司的信息披露质量和投资者的信息置信度产生经济后果。基于此,本文的研究思路是从上市公司和投资者对独立审计的需求动因出发,结合独立审计的4个价值从理论上分析审计质量如何影响权益资本成本,进一步从国有企业和非国有企业的政治目标,融资约束,破产风险等方面分析在两类不同性质企业中,审计质量对权益资本成本的影响程度有何差异。在此基础上本文选取沪深股市2004——2008全部A股上市公司为研究对象,通过实证分析得出结论,并提出本文的政策建议。本文共分为六个部分,各章节内容安排如下：第1章,导论。本章主要叙述本文的研究背景和意义、同时说明本文的研究思路和方法。本章构成整篇论文的基石,重点是提出本文的研究问题和研究价值,并对研究的开展进行规划。第2章,文献综述。本章主要回顾关于审计质量的内涵、研究框架和经济后果,权益资本成本的估算模型以及审计质量与权益资本成本关系三方面的研究文献,系统总结国内外的研究现状和研究成果,最后进行文献评述,找到本文的研究方向。第3章,制度背景与理论分析。本章首先结合我国的制度背景分析中国审计市场的特点和供需状况,为本文研究设计的合理性提出保障。第二部分以上市公司和投资者对独立审计的需求为视角,从委托代理理论,信息不对称理论,信号显示理论和保险理论出发,阐述独立审计的四个价值,探讨审计质量与权益资本成本的关系,继而结合我国产权性质的特点对两者关系加以分析,并提出本文的研究假设。第4章,研究设计。本章首先进行变量设计,选取事务所规模和行业专长作为审计质量的替代指标,采用GLS三阶段剩余收益模型估算权益资本成本,借鉴前人的研究成果挑选控制变量,在此基础上进行样本数据的选取和模型的构建,为实证分析做好准备。第5章,实证结果及分析。本章通过描述性统计,皮尔森相关系数分析和多变量回归分析对模型和假设做出检验。考虑到事务所可能基于规避风险而选择素质好的客户,素质好的客户也可能因为拥有更强的经济实力而倾向于选择高质量的审计师,本文采用Heckman的两阶段回归方法对自选择偏误进行控制,重新检验审计质量、产权性质以及权益资本成本的关系,试图使本文的结果更具说服力。第6章,研究结论、政策启示、主要贡献与不足。本章主要对第五部分的实证结果得出最终的研究结论,并提出相应的政策建议。同时对本文的主要贡献和创新以及研究的不足之处进行总结。在理论分析和实证检验后,本文得到如下研究结论：第一,在控制其他因素影响后,选择高质量的审计师可以降低企业的权益资本成本。这表明在中国目前的资本市场,审计作为一种外部治理机制和信息鉴证机制确实发挥了作用,验证了独立审计的信息功能,说明审计具有信息价值。一方面,上市公司的事务所选择行为实际上充当了一种自愿信息披露政策,研究结果显示,通过选择高质量的事物所确实能够起到信号显示功能,减少信息不对称和投资者的逆向选择,降低权益资本成本；另一方面,结果还表明投资者对经高质量事务所审计的企业产生了更高的信息置信度,验证了审计师声誉在我国的经济后果。第二,高质量审计对企业权益资本成本的降低作用在非国有企业中表现得更加显著。这一方面可能是因为非国有企业经理人的薪酬和升迁机会直接与企业的经营业绩挂钩,在银行贷款方面非国有企业也受到更多的限制,因此它们粉饰报表的动机更强使得投资者面临更大的信息风险。同时,国有企业由于得到政府的支持并且本身存在一定的声誉效应,投资者对它的信息风险不如非国有企业敏感,因此在国有企业中会削弱审计质量的经济价值。本文的主要贡献和创新主要体现在以下五个方面：第一,目前国内对审计质量的研究基本集中在审计质量的影响因素,审计质量与会计信息透明度的关系以及审计质量能否抑制盈余管理方面,而鲜少有人探讨审计质量与融资成本的关系。本文在前人研究的基础上继续发展,探讨高质量的审计能否降低公司的权益资本成本,验证了独立审计在我国的经济价值,丰富了审计质量经济后果研究的相关文献。第二,以往有学者认为企业信息披露质量的高低能够影响到投资者的决策进而对公司的股权融资成本产生影响(汪炜、蒋高峰,2004；曾颖、陆正飞,2006等)。基于这个思路,本文考察了高质量的审计是否可以通过改善信息披露质量,提高投资者对财务报告的可信度来产生经济附加值。因此,本文的研究进一步充实了信息披露质量与权益资本成本的相关研究。第三,关于独立审计定价功能的研究,以往的文献基本局限于IPO市场,本文将研究范围进一步扩展到非IPO市场,试图探讨审计质量的高低能否对企业的潜在融资成本造成影响。第四,我国的体制背景很特殊,国有企业和非国有企业在政治目标,融资条件和破产风险等方面都有很大不同,政府对两类企业的扶持程度也有明显的差异,进而国有企业和非国有企业的投资者对独立审计的依赖程度也不同。因此,本文在两类不同产权性质的企业中探讨审计质量对权益资本成本影响的差异,可以更好地解释我国的特殊情况。第五,在审计行业专长的衡量方法上,本文根据中国的实际情况,基于已有的研究,创造性地对市场份额法和组合份额法进行了整合,把两者结合起来重新定义了审计行业专长,为今后研究该领域的学者考量审计行业专长提供了一个崭新的视角。本文在写作过程中,还存在一些不足：由于中国没有权威的预测数据,本文在采用GLS三阶段剩余收益模型估算权益资本成本时,用实际的净资产收益率代替前3年的预测数据,该方法计算复杂并且需要对很多数据进行估计,因此本文计算出的权益资本成本可能不是特别准确并影响到实证结果。其次,本文对产权性质的探讨不够深入和细致,审计质量与权益资本成本的关系在中央政府和地方政府控制的企业中是否存在差异是值得继续深入研究的,这也为本文以后的研究提供了方向。更多还原

【Abstract】 Since China resumed the system of certified public accountants in1980, auditing industry experienced stages of recovery and reconstruction, separating from the government as well as the expansion. Promoted by the Government and related institutions, audit quality has been significantly improved. Some scholars describe the audit equality of CPA after2001as this:each per of audit costs can bring about the effectiveness of error correction by￥470, CPA prevented more than180companies from managing earnings to get rid of the ST hat, disclosed more than700irregularities, avoided￥550billion stock market bubble, recovered more than￥180billion state taxes and adjusted a large amount of profits which can launch "Shenzhou VI" at least eleven times. This indicates that since the reform was completed, accounting firms went out of administrative monopoly and improved the audit quality. On the other hand, With the transforming of the stock distribution system, the increasing number of listed companies, the improving of the regulatory system and legal environment, the situation of "seller’s market" has gone, investors became more rational. In order to attract potential investors and achieve the purpose of reducing the cost of equity capital, listed companies which have refinancing needs increasingly focused on the quality of information disclosure. In this period, the economic value of the independent audit begins to emerge. So it is necessary and meaningful to study on the economic consequences of audit quality in this context.Although at present, China’s audit market shows the low concentration and the character of highly competitive,it also gradually formed the audit market structure with the main body of "big four" and local top four audit firms, Scholars show that there is a systematic difference of audit quality among the audit firms in China. Therefore, companies can choose different-quality auditors to pass a valid market signals, affect investors’ decision-making and the expected rate of return, which lays a good system foundation to explore the relationship between audit quality and the cost of equity capital in this paper. Whether audit quality can affect the cost of equity capital? In our special institutional environment, if the relationship is different between SOEs and NSOEs? This article seeks to answer these two questions.This article hope study on the relation of audit quality and equity capital cost to examine whether the independent audit play a real role in the capital market and verify its’ information value. Then the paper account for the different nature of property rights in order to better explain the special circumstances of our country and provide some inspiration and reference to the listed firms and related institutions. The audit quality contains two dimensions named auditor monitoring strength and auditor reputation which can bring economic consequences by respectively affecting the disclosure quality of listed companies and investors’ confidence for the information. Based on this, the paper put the reason why listed companies and investors’ demand for independent audit as the starting point, combined with4values of the independent audit to explore how it affects the cost of equity capital, then contact the special institutional features, examine whether the different nature of property rights have different implications for the relationship between the two. After analysis, this paper put all A-share companies listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets among2004-2008as the research object, by making the empirical analysis to draw conclusions and policy recommendations.This paper is divided into six chapters, each one is as followed:Chapter1:Introduction. This part mainly outlines research background, research significance, the thought of the issues as well as the method of this paper.Chapter2:Literature Review. It summaries the relevant literature from three aspects that are the audit quality, equity capital cost estimation model and the relationship between audit quality and the cost of equity capital. Finally making comments on the literature, find the research direction.Chapter3:System background and Theoretical analysis. At the beginning of this part, it analysis the characteristics, supply and demand conditions of the Chinese audit market.The second part use the principal-agent theory, information asymmetry theory, signal theory and Insurance theory to expound the value of independent audit and investigate the relationship between the audit quality and cost of equity capital. Then combined with the characteristics of property rights in China to analyze the relationship between the two, and put forward the research hypothesis of this article.Chapter4:Study Design. This chapter begins with designing variables, defining alternative indicators of audit quality, explaining the method to calculate the cost of equity capital, selecting the control variables. Then focus on the sample data and the model building, preparing for the empirical analysis.Chapter5:Empirical results and analysis. This part mainly tests the model and proves the assumptions by descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation coefficient analysis and multivariate regression analysis. Considering with endogenous auditor choice, this chapter adopts Heckman two-stage regression method to make the robustness test, at the same time analyzes and explains the empirical resultsChapter6:Conclusions, Policy recommendations, the main contributions and innovations as well as study limitations. This chapter draws final conclusions based on the empirical results of the fifth part, and then appropriate policy recommendations are made. The last of the part comes with the main contributions and innovations as well as the discussion of the limitation of this thesis.Main findings in this thesis are as follows.The first conclusion is that Controlling for other factors, companies audited by high-quality firms can reduce the cost of equity capital. The result of this study shows that audit quality is negatively correlated with the cost of equity capital. After controlling for the impact of endogenous auditor choice, this relationship is still valid. This indicates that the audit do play a role in China’s capital make as an external governance mechanisms and information assurance mechanisms, the result verifies the information value of independent audit.On the one hand, the audit choice of listed companies actually acts as a voluntary disclosure policy, the behavior of choosing high-quality auditors can make a valid signal to the market so that relieving information asymmetry and reducing adverse selection of investors, finally decreasing the cost of equity capital. On the other hand, the result also shows that investors have higher confidence for the enterprises audited by high-quality firms, it verifies the auditor reputation do bring economic consequences. The second conclusion is that the effect of audit quality on cost of equity capital is weaker for SOEs than for NSOEs. It may be resulting from the stronger motivation of the NSOEs to whitewash financial statements make investors face greater information risk than SOEs. At the same time, due to give more support from the Government and there is a certain reputation effect of SOEs, investors of SOEs are no more sensitive to the information risk than that of NSOEs. Therefore, the economic value of audit quality is discounted in the SOEs.The main contributions of this paper and innovations are reflected in five areas:Firstly, Current domestic research on audit quality mainly focused on three aspects that are the factors affecting the audit quality, the relationship between audit quality and the transparency of accounting information as well as whether audit quality can restrain earnings management. It’s unusual to find the literature about if audit quality may affect the cost of financing. This paper extends prior research by studying the effect of audit quality on the cost of equality capital, enriching the domestic research literature about the economic consequences of audit quality.Secondly, some scholars have made study on the relationship between information disclosure and cost of equity capital. Independent audit as an information assurance mechanism can improve the quality of information disclosure, improve the reliability of financial reporting, resulting in economic value. Therefore, this study further enriches the study of information disclosure and cost of equity capital.Thirdly, the prior research of the pricing function of the independent audit was essentially limited to the IPO market; this paper is further extended the scope to non-IPO market.Fourthly, The institutional context of our country is very special, SOEs and NSOEs are very different in terms of political objectives, agency problems, the risk of bankruptcy and the degree of support from the government, which make the investors in the two categories of enterprises have different degree of reliance to the audit, so it can better explain the special situation of our country to distinguish SOEs from NSOEs to study the relationship of audit quality and the cost of equality capital in these two categories enterprises. Fifthly, based on existing research, the thesis integrates the IMS with IPS to measure the audit industry expertise according to actual situation in China; this can provide a new perfective for the scholars studying in this field.There are still some limitations in the thesis:At first, This paper adopts GLS three-stage residual income model to calculate the cost of equality capital, due to lack of authoritative forecast data, using actual ROE to substitute the first three years ROE forecast data, so the calculation result is not necessarily very accurate, which may affect the empirical results of the article. Besides, the study for the nature of property rights is still not deep enough in this paper. Whether the relationship between audit quality and the cost of equity capital is different in the central government and local government-controlled enterprise is deserve to further study, which also provides a research direction later in this article.更多还原