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CEO Equity Incentives and Audit Fees
Author(s) -
Kim Yongtae,
Li Haidan,
Li Siqi
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
contemporary accounting research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.769
H-Index - 99
eISSN - 1911-3846
pISSN - 0823-9150
DOI - 10.1111/1911-3846.12096
Subject(s) - audit , equity (law) , citation , incentive , accounting , political science , library science , business , economics , law , computer science , microeconomics
This study examines whether CEO equity incentives have an impact on audit pricing. Prior studies investigate whether CEO equity incentives motivate executives to manage earnings for personal financial gains. Our focus is on whether auditors perceive CEO equity incentives to be associated with greater earnings manipulation risk and incorporate such risk in their pricing decisions. We find that CEO equity portfolio vega is positively related to audit fees after controlling for other determinants of audit fees, while equity portfolio delta is not significantly related to audit fees. This result holds after we account for potential endogeneity. The evidence suggests that auditors are concerned about CEOs’ incentives to manage earnings because equity holdings tie CEOs’ wealth to risk and cause CEOs to be less risk-averse. The findings in our study improve our understanding of how executive compensation affects auditors’ pricing decisions.