The Relationships among Corporate Crisis Intensity, Audit Fees, and Earnings Management

• Main Authors: Yi-Ning Lo, 羅翊寧
• Other Authors: Kuo-Tay Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/82t8ta

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 會計學研究所 === 105 === This thesis examines the relationships among corporate crisis intensity, audit fees, and earnings management. Corporate crisis intensity in this study means the negative information delivered by news. Our sample is based on financial news and other kinds of financial information in 2015 and 2016. We use Intensity of Default-Corpus(ITDC)as the proxy variable of corporate crisis intensity, which is extracted from the website of News Quantified Index developed by Ming Chuan University, Chinatimes, and Udn. The regression results show that the corporate crisis intensity is positively associated with audit fees charged by the audit firms. However, there is no significant relationship between corporate crisis intensity and the degree of earnings management. After considering the influence of audit fee and add it into the regression model, we find that when the audit firms charge higher audit fees, it can lower the degree of accrual-based earnings management caused by high corporate crisis intensity. By contrast, higher audit fees may enhance the degree of real earnings management caused by high corporate crisis intensity. The result not only supports our hypothesis, but also is consistent with previous research about these two kinds of earnings management. In conclusion, this study proved that financial news is more than a tool to deliver message, it may also influence audit fees and the degree of earnings management.