The Role of Firm Ownership Type and Earnings Management on Auditor Choice and Audit Fee of Non-Financial Firms

Abstract

In the past decade, there were cases questioning firm's auditor choice like Enron, Tyco International, and WorldCom. Auditor choice (big 4 vs non-big 4) is a proxy of audit quality which audit fee capable to be proxy too. The research purpose is to analyze the impact of firm ownership type and earnings management to auditor choice and audit fee of nonfinancial firms listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX). This research employed quantitative approach using binary logistic regression for auditor choice and multiple linier regression, Ordinary Least Square method for audit fee. The research sample is 609 firms for auditor choice and 566 firms for audit fee. Our findings show that firm ownership and earnings do not have significant relationship with auditor choice but have significant relationship with audit fee. State owned firm is more likely to pay lower audit fee and firm with higher earnings management will pay higher audit fee. This study examines implications which are firm ownership type only divided to 2 categories (state owned firm and non-state-owned firm), time period of this research is limited for only 3 years (2015 -2017), and limited control variables to explain the relationship between variables. Keywords-firm ownership type; earnings management; auditor choice; audit fee of non-financial firms; Indonesian stock exchange1st Social and Humaniora Research Symposium (SoRes 2018)

Impact of Ownership Characteristics on Modified Audit Opinion in Jordan

“…According to agency theory, agency matters are caused by the difference between the interests of stakeholders and managers. The interests of stakeholders should be of superior concern because the corporate's objectives should serve the prosperity of stakeholders [23,24]. Agency theory implies that ownership and control separation can cause a difference in the interests of owners and that of managers [25].…”