Partner industry specialization and audit pricing in the United Kingdom

Abstract

This study investigates the effects of audit partner industry specialization on audit pricing in the UK market. The mandatory disclosure of the name of the engagement partner in the auditor reports of UK public listed companies took effect from April 2008. Given that the identity of the audit partner is now observable to users of financial statements, it can be argued that there may be an incentive for partner-level differentiation in auditing products, and hence, audit quality. This research examines whether auditor industry expertise in the UK is driven by firm, office, or partner level expertise. The fee premium observed in the study is a joint product of firm and partner level of industry expertise with the highest premium occurring when the client is also audited by an industry leading partner. This finding lends support to the argument that industry expertise is uniquely attributable to the individual audit partner’s human capital in terms of their knowledge and experience from leading audit engagements in a particular industry. It also provides evidence that some fee premiums earned by audit firms and documented in prior literature are most probably the product of the individual audit partner’s expertise.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intaccaudtax.2019.05.005
Divisions: College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Business School > Accounting
Additional Information: © 2019, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Uncontrolled Keywords: Audit fee premium,Audit partner,Audit pricing,Industry specialization,United Kingdom,Accounting,Finance
Publication ISSN: 1879-1603
Last Modified: 18 Mar 2024 08:28
Date Deposited: 20 May 2019 13:42
Full Text Link: https://dspace. ... ndle/2134/37214
Related URLs: https://www.sci ... sd_search_email (Publisher URL)
http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2019-06-01
Published Online Date: 2019-05-18
Accepted Date: 2019-05-13
Submitted Date: 2018-12-01
Authors: Mohd Kharuddin, Khairul Ayuni
Basioudis, Ilias G (ORCID Profile 0000-0003-3116-2718)
Hay, David

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