This study examines whether auditors are employed as a monitoring mechanism to mitigate agency problems arising from different types of controlling shareholders. In a context of concentrated ownership and poor investor protection, controlling shareholders can easily expropriate wealth from...

Author's abstract. This study examines whether auditors are employed as a monitoring mechanism to mitigate agency problems between controlling shareholders and minority shareholders (named Type II agency conflict). In a context of ownership concentration and poor investor protection, controlling...

The purpose of this study is to provide an empirical analysis of the relationship between ownership structure of French firms and their value. Using data for 510 French publicly traded firms, the current study provides evidence in support of the entrenchment hypothesis. The results show that...

This study empirically examines the supply side of the market for non-audit services. In particular, a model for the supply side of the market for non-audit services is developed. This model is then tested using audit and non-audit fee data from Fijian listed companies from the year 1980 to...

In its recently published Green Paper, the European Commission 2010 discusses various methods to enhance the reliability of audits and to re-establish trust in the financial market. The Commission primarily focuses on increasing auditor independence and on reducing the high level of audit market...

This study investigates the impact of the COB’s mandated public disclosure of audit fees on subsequent period audit pricing. Our theoretical model predicts that the public disclosure of fees will lead to greater precision and reduced dispersion (less variance) in subsequent period fees. Using...

We examine a sample of 300 publicly listed companies in three European countries (France, Germany and the UK) during the period 2003-2008 to investigate the relations between audit fees and several auditor and company attributes. These include quantitative and qualitative variables. The presence...

This study focuses on fees paid to auditors during a major accounting change associated with extra audit risk and work. Specifically, we analyse how a major accounting change from local GAAP to IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) affects the audit and non-audit fees paid to...

Recent studies have documented that auditor industry specialization is associated with higher audit fees for public firms in Australia, the U.S. and the U.K. This paper uses a unique dataset that consists of all audit engagements for the year 2004 to examine this issue in Belgium. We document...

We investigate the impact of three German audit market characteristics on audit and non-audit fees for the years 2005-2007. We find no relation between audit and non-audit fees, which suggests that audit and non-audit fee determination in Germany does not indicate any particular impairment of...