An empirical investigation of auditor independence and accounting

conservatism: Further evidence from Taiwan market-based incentives

Authors: Yi-Hsing Liao

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Outline Presented Research motivation Research purposes Research design Hypotheses development

Empirical methodology and variable measurement

Sample formation and data resources

Empirical results and analysis Summary and concluding remarks

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Research motivation According to the literatures surveyed, whether non-audit

services really create a threat to auditor’s independence and reporting quality has been controversial for a long time and not yet come to a conclusion currently. In addition, a number of prior studies find that they are short of significant evidence to support the argument that non-audit services reduce auditor independence. One of the reasons why the auditing literatures can not draw a consistent conclusion on the matter is that they only focus on the impacts of non-audit services on auditor independence but ignore the role of market forces (Craswell et al. 1995; Larcker and Richardson 2004; Ruddock et al. 2006). Therefore, to explore the effect of market forces on the relationship between non-audit services and accounting conservatism is potentially interesting.

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Research purposes This paper aims to extend the literatures of non-

audit services research, and further explore the impacts of market forces on the relationship between the provision of non-audit services and accounting conservatism from the viewpoint of corporate governance. I hope my research can provide additional evidence with respect to market forces definitely serve to discipline auditors from compromising their independence.

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Research design-Hypotheses development H1: Ceteris paribus, the auditors’ fee dependence

is negatively associated with the level of accounting conservatism. .

H2: Ceteris paribus, the negative effect of

auditors’ fee dependence on earnings conservatism is higher for firms with weak quality of board oversight than for firms with strong quality of board oversight .

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Empirical methodology and variable measurementProxies for Auditor Independence:

the ratio of non-audit fees to total fees abnormal non-audit fees based on the expectation models

abnormal total fees based on the expectation models

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Empirical methodology and variable measurement

Proxies for Board Characteristics:

This paper employs four characteristics for board of director to shed light on the independence and monitoring motivation of the board: (i) Percentage of independent directors and supervisors on the board, (ii) Percentage of family directors and supervisors on the board, (iii) CEO duality, and (iv) Board size.

The percentile rank method is applied to the four individual measures of board characteristics-INDEP, FAM, CEO, and BOSIZE-to drive an overall governance score which I denote as CGTS (Milliron 2000; Bushman et al. 2004). For the following analysis, this paper will use the aggregate CGTS measure as a proxy for board characteristics governance.

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Empirical methodology and variable measurement

Measurement of Accounting Conservatism: The accrual-based conservatism measure (hereafter

ACCRUAL) is computed as follows: Net income before extraordinary items plus depreciation expense less cash flows from operations is deflated by average total assets, and averaged over 3 years centered around year “t”.

Basu’s asymmetric timeliness of earnings measure with the backward-cumulation approach.

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Empirical methodology and variable measurement Empirical model for tests using accrual-based conservatism

measures is as follows:

According to H1, as auditors reduces their independence, the level of accounting conservatism will decrease, therefore, I predict that β1 >0. Furthermore, β3 represents the incremental effect of client importance on accounting conservatism for firms with strong board governance. If H2 is valid, then I would predict that β3 <0.

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Empirical methodology and variable measurementACCRUAL: net income before extraordinary items plus depreciation expense less cash

flows from operations deflated by average total assets and averaged over 3 years centered around year t;

CLIMP: three measures of client importance that focus on the ratio of non-audit fees to total fees, abnormal total fees and abnormal non-audit fees;

BOARD: an overall governance scores for board characteristics driven by the percentile rank method;

SIZE: the natural logarithm of average total assets; LEV: total long-term liabilities divided by average total assets;

SAGR: percentage of annual growth in total sales; INST: ratio of sum of foreign institutional, securities investment trust

enterprises’ and securities firms’ ownership to total ordinary shares outstanding;

RDAV: research and development costs plus advertising expense divided by sales; CFO: cash flows from operations deflated by average total assets; IMR: the inverse Mill’s ratio obtained from the two-stage Heckman (1978)

approach; ε: residual;

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Empirical methodology and variable measurement Empirical model for tests using Basu’s asymmetric timeliness of earnings

measure is as follows:

Under Basu (1997) regression specification, I expect the coefficient for

β13 to be significantly negative. According to H2, I predict that the coefficient of β21 will be significantly positive.

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Empirical methodology and variable measurement

Et, t-j: income before extraordinary items cumulative from year t-j to year t;

Pt-j-1: the market value of equity at the end of the year t-j-1;

Rt, t-j: the buy-and-hold return starting 4 months after the end of the fiscal year t-j-1

and ending 4 months after the end of year t;

DRt, ,t-j: a dummy variable is equal to one if DR is negative, zero otherwise;

MTBt: market-to-book ratio defined as market value of equity divided by book value

of equity at the end of current year; LEVt: total long-term liabilities divided by average total assets;

CLIMPt: three measures of client importance that focus on the ratio of non-audit fees to total fees, abnormal total fees and abnormal non-audit fees;

BOARDt: an overall governance scores for board characteristics driven by the percentile

rank method; IMRt: the inverse Mill’s ratio obtained from the two-stage Heckman (1978) approach;

ε: residual;

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Sample formation and data resourcesTABLE 2 Sample Selection and Sample Breakdown by Industry from 2002 to 2006

Panel A Sample Selection Total Number of firm years with complete data for estimated proxy measure for abnormal fees (after the exclusion of Financial Institution)

412

Missing the inverse Mill’s ratio data 10 Missing board characteristics data in the annual report 74 Missing one or more variables related to earnings conservatism measure model

58

Final sample 270 Panel B Sample Breakdown by Industry

Industry Firm-years Chemicals 6 Cement 5 Automobile 8 Glass ceramics 3 Food 7 Textiles 8 Shipping and transportation 2 Information service 1 Paper pulp 1 Trading and consumers' goods 2 Plastics 11 Electron 149 Electronic and cable 2 Electronic machinery 20 Rubber 7 Iron and steel 12 Building material and construction 9 Other 17

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Sample formation and data resourcessample period

the sample period spans five years from 2002 through 2006.

data sources Regarding data sources, except for the board characteristics

variables which are manually collected from the annual reports, the regression variables required for estimating accounting conservatism and other financial variables of the empirical model are all collected from the TEJ database and the Times Winner database.

The demand for non-audit services may depend upon firm’s economic characteristics. To address this self-selection bias issue, my study uses the two-stage procedure of Heckman (1979) to solve the problem.

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Empirical results and analysis-Table 5Variable Predicted sign Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Intercept 0.222

(0.000)*** 0.202

(0.000)*** 0.226

(0.000)***

NAFTF + 0.034

(0.033)**

RESITF +

-0.012 (0.167)

RESINAF +

0.005

(0.025)**

BOARD ? 0.035

(0.005)*** 0.015

(0.049)** 0.011

(0.187) CLIMP* BOARD

-

-0.093 (0.007)***

-0.057 (0.000)***

-0.011 (0.012)**

SIZE ?

-0.010 (0.000)***

-0.009 (0.001)***

-0.010 (0.001)***

LEV - -0.059

(0.005)*** -0.058

(0.014)** -0.059

(0.023)**

SAGR + 0.034

(0.008)*** 0.028

(0.016)** 0.033

(0.008)***

INST ? 0.107

(0.001)*** 0.110

(0.003)*** 0.106

(0.010)**

RDAV - -0.159

(0.003)*** -0.144

(0.003)*** -0.156

(0.005)***

CFO - -0.334

(0.000)*** -0.321

(0.000)*** -0.331

(0.000)***

IMR ? -0.031

(0.001)*** -0.023

(0.006)*** -0.031

(0.001)***

β2＋β4 - -0.059

(0.043)** -0.069

(0.000)*** -0.007

(0.094)* Adjusted-R2 31.16% 37.39% 30.67% F Statistic (p-value)

13.178

(0.000)*** 17.063

(0.000)*** 12.901

(0.000)*** N 270 270 270

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Empirical results and analysis-Table 6

Variable Predicted sign Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Intercept ? 0.399

(0.101) 0.513

(0.019)** 0.406

(0.071)*

DR - -2.246

(0.001)*** -2.228

(0.002)*** -1.891

(0.001)***

R + 0.337

(0.031)** 0.239

(0.074)* 0.319

(0.025)**

R*DR + -4.168

(0.009)*** -4.285

(0.003)*** -3.981

(0.005)***

MTB ? 0.035

(0.384) -0.009 (0.805)

0.020 (0.598)

MTB*DR ? 0.171

(0.230) 0.432

(0.019)** 0.086

(0.555)

MTB*R ? -0.013

(0.032)** -0.006 (0.279)

-0.013 (0.035)**

MTB*R*DR - -0.103 (0.411)

0.074 (0.444)

-0.187 (0.353)

LEV ? -0.374 (0.185)

-0.259 (0.277)

-0.263 (0.326)

LEV*DR ? 2.379

(0.005)*** 2.531

(0.008)*** 2.679

(0.004)***

LEV*R ? 0.088

(0.506) 0.063

(0.609) 0.054

(0.703)

LEV*R*DR + 5.340

(0.001)*** 6.561

(0.001)*** 6.066

(0.001)***

CLIMP ? 0.232

(0.543) 0.574

(0.005)*** 0.046

(0.419)

CLIMP*DR ? 1.534

(0.057)* -1.054

(0.001)*** 0.415

(0.097)*

CLIMP*R ? -0.131 (0.718)

-0.385 (0.006)***

-0.009 (0.805)

CLIMP*R*DR - 2.225

(0.241) -1.649

(0.016)** 0.825

(0.197)

BOARD ? 0.089

(0.498) 0.092

(0.186) 0.068

(0.308)

BOARD*DR ? -0.156 (0.752)

0.135 (0.552)

0.569 (0.023)**

BOARD*R ? 0.113

(0.223) 0.054

(0.206) 0.041

(0.324)

BOARD*R*DR ? -1.717 (0.106)

0.331 (0.530)

1.145 (0.032)**

CLIMP*BOARD ? -0.003 (0.995)

-0.682 (0.003)***

-0.047 (0.498)

CLIMP*BOARD*DR ? 1.838

(0.161) 1.880

(0.000)*** 0.291

(0.373)

CLIMP*BOARD*R ? -0.402 (0.328)

0.423 (0.007)***

0.005 (0.901)

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Empirical results and analysis-Table 6

Table 6 (continued)

Variable Predicted

sign Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

CLIMP*BOARD*R*DR + 8.194

(0.000)*** 3.886

(0.000)*** 1.347

(0.056)*

IMR ? -0.085 (0.471)

-0.134 (0.274)

-0.078 (0.528)

IMR*DR ? 0.366

(0.020)** 0.449

(0.046)** 0.324

(0.115)

IMR*R ? -0.167

(0.060)* -0.109 (0.119)

-0.152 (0.094)*

IMR*R*DR ? 1.085

(0.000)*** 1.134

(0.000)*** 1.031

(0.000)***

β13＋β21 + 10.419

(0.000)*** 2.237

(0.016)** 2.171

(0.000)***

Adjusted-R2 51.08% 50.65% 49.47% F Statistic (p-value)

10.437

(0.000)*** 10.274

(0.000)*** 9.848

(0.000)*** N 245 245 245

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Robustness tests I rerun the analyses after deleting the outliers and the results

do not change. I repeat all tests reported in Tables 5 and 6 with board

governance based on outside directors and supervisors in replace of independent counterparts, all results are not qualitatively affected.

I perform book-to-market ratio tests following Beaver and Ryan (2000) as another conservatism measure.

The paper further investigates the impacts of alternative market forces such as litigation risk and reputation loss on the relationship between client importance and accounting conservatism.

To ensure that the clients of any one audit firm are not driving the results, I form five separate subsamples by deleting in turn the clients of each of the Big 4 firms and non-Big 4 firms at a time.

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Summary and concluding remarks Empirical results reveal that the impairment of

auditor independence is significantly associated with the reduction of conservatism. Especially, I further find that sound board governance mechanisms definitely offset the effect of aggressive accounting caused by impaired auditor independence.

Collectively, these findings are consistent with the view that board governance is the primary determinant of auditor’s attitude toward conservative accounting.

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Thank you for your attention!