论文摘要：We analyze the consequences of a firm hiring a generalist CEO in terms of the audit fees paid by the firm. We find that audit fees of clients with generalist CEOs are higher than those of clients with specialist CEOs. This relation is robust to considering managerial ability, other CEO characteristics, various fixed effects, instrumental variables, and change analyses. We further show that fee differences are larger for firms with weaker monitoring and higher corporate litigation risks. Through path analysis, we find that both client business risk and misreporting risk contribute to the fee difference. Finally, we find that auditors are more likely to issue going-concern opinions to clients with generalist CEOs. Our study should be of interest to auditing standard setters who link management operating styles to audit risk. We shed light on how management operating styles associated with the CEOs’ general or specialized skills affect audit pricing.

论文链接：https://doi.org/10.2308/AJPT-18-086

本文发表于Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory2021年第40卷4期。该期刊是美国会计学会(AAA)发行的审计领域的旗舰期刊，为hbs04红宝石线路B+类奖励期刊，作者按姓氏字母排序。