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The Influence Of Audit Opinion On Information Users’ Economic Decisions

Posted on:2016-03-13Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:L Y ZhangFull Text:PDF
GTID:1109330464962402Subject:Accounting
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It is generally believed that the role of the market lies in the reasonable effectively to achieve optimum allocation of resources, realize the pareto optimality, equal to marginal cost and marginal revenue. The asymmetry of information, can lead to market allocation of resources distortions to appear adverse selection in advance and moral hazard afterwards. In the capital market, information asymmetry affect participants’ decisions:investors because of information asymmetry would opt for a Buying and Holding strategy causing market trading volume shrunk; The information asymmetry between the investors and management lead to outside investors hard to understand the real condition of company, only according to the market average value to estimate share price that lead to real good performance, high intrinsic value of a company stock is undervalued and exit from the market, "Bad money drives out good". So the disclosure of information is necessary for solving information asymmetry problem in capital market and inhibiting adverse selection and moral hazard. Independent audit is one of the capital market information disclosure system, it expresses opinion about the financial statement of client to determine whether the F/S is prepared in accordance with the accounting standards, and present fairly and truly about the financial position, economic results and cash flow, which provides assurance to the financial statements. The audit opinion is positive significant to reduce the information asymmetry and reduce the contract cost.At present, the audit opinion research is mainly divided into two parts, part of scholars study the influencing factors of audit opinion, that is the cause of the issue of non-standard audit opinions, such as the degree of earnings management, choice and rotation of auditor, choice and rotation of CPA firms, audit fees and so on. There are also research focus on economic environment factors influencing audit opinion, such as the financial crisis, the state-owned equity nature, social trust, political associations, government intervention and others. Another part of the scholars mainly focus on the influence of audit opinion on the company’s share price and corporate finance. Among them, the study of audit opinion affect the company’s share price, for the present study is rich, abroad study such as Baskin (1972), the Firth (1978), Ball et al. (1979), Balvers et al. (1988), Chen and Church (1996), Willenborg (1999), domestic study follows Chen et al. (1999), Li zengquan (1999), Chan Xin (1999), Chen meihua (2002), Song chang and Yun biyan (2005). For research on the effects of audit opinion on the company’s financing, the current study is less. Estes and & Reimer (1977), the Firth (1979), Bailey et al. (1983), Bessell and Umar (2002) studied the situation abroad, Lin zhijun (2003), Hu yiming and Zhou Wei (2004), Zhang chun and Lv Wei (2007), Wei zhihua (2012) studied the relationship between auditing opinions of China’s listed companies and corporate finance.The influence of the audit opinion on the company’s share price and corporate finance, can be understand as the concept "audit opinion impact on economic subject decisions", it means that the audit opinion to the economic subject has information content. However, the existing research, are only focused on a certain part of the economic subject, not systematic. This paper firstly systematically research the impact of audit opinion to economic agents decisions, mainly from the investors, the creditors and management three perspectives. This article first reviewed the main literature of auditing opinions, including the influencing factors of audit opinion, such as the degree of earnings management, firm, auditors, etc., also reviewed the main literature about auditing opinions effect, including the market reaction (information content), audit opinion impact on the company’s financing, etc. At the same time, this paper has made comments on the related literature, points out the shortages of the existing research. Then, this paper expounds the basic concepts related. It includes relevant theories of audit opinions and audit demands, western types of audit reports, the development of Chinese audit opinion, the use of audit opinion in China and the yearly distribution of the audit opinion type in China, etc.Based on three perspectives of investors, creditors and management decisions, in this paper, the research content mainly includes the following aspects:1. The audit opinion influence on decision-making of investors. It includes two aspects:the company’s share price valuation and stock trading volume. Existing studies mainly focus on the influence of audit opinion on the company’s share price, this is also known as the market reaction. For the role of audit opinion on the company’s stock trading volume, the existing literature is not involved, and the existing research using fewer number of samples. This paper tries to make up for the shortage of the existing literature, observes the effect of audit opinions from two aspects of market reaction and stock trading volume. Using large sample data of Chinese listed companies, this paper finds that the audit opinion will cause changes in the company’s share price, the audit opinion and the excess of the cumulative abnormal returns (CAR) of shares has significant relationship, non-standard audit opinions can lead to a company’s share price fell, the audit opinion has information content. This conclusion is consistence with Li zengquan (1999), Song chang and Yun biyan (2005) and others research. At the same time, this article finds that the capital market to the financial report of various non-standard audit opinions indeed there are some different reaction, the capital market can distinguish differences between unqualified report with explanatory paragraph and qualified opinion with differences between unqualified report with explanatory paragraph and disclaimer opinion. But it is unable to distinguish between qualified and disclaimer opinion. In addition, in this paper, the study finds that disclosure of non-standard audit opinions of the ST companies cause the capital market reaction, suggesting that the capital market pay more attention to ST companies. However, disclosure of non-standard audit opinions of different nature of the enterprise does not show obvious differences. For stock trading volume, this paper finds that:the audit opinions indeed affect the company’s stock trading volume, and, on different stock trading volume reaction time, there is a difference. For disclaimer opinions, stock trading volume in the reaction-5 days; qualified opinions, stock trading volume in the reaction+3 days; qualified report with explanatory paragraph, stock trading volume is reflected in -1 day; unqualified report with explanatory paragraph, stock trading volume is reflected in -2 days.2. The audit opinion influence on decision-making of creditors. It includes two aspects:one is the audit opinion affect bank credit decisions; another is the audit opinion influence trade credit decisions. Using large sample data of Chinese listed companies, the study finds that the audit opinion does influence the number of the company get a bank loan, this suggests that the audit opinion has affected the bank lending decisions. Non-standard audit opinions have negative impact on bank lending decisions, bank loan of companies got non-standard audit opinion are less than ones received standard audit opinion. And, the impact of audit opinion on short-term bank loans and long-term bank lending has obvious difference:non-standard audit opinion has a greater impact on long-term bank loans. This paper also finds that company size can affect the bank’s long-term loans, short-term lending decisions; nature of the firm can affect the banks’ short-term lending decisions but not long-term lending decisions; company’s largest shareholder effect short-term bank loan and long-term lending decisions; financial leverage can have positive impact on short-term bank loans and long-term bank lending decisions; and the financial development and growth opportunities have no obvious impact on long-term loans and short-term lending decisions. For commercial credit decision-making, zhang yong (2013) doesn’t delete business credit provided by related party, this may lead to wrong conclusions. This article first makes above deletion, the study finds that the audit opinion really can reduce the company’s commercial credit. When the company received non-standard audit opinion, current commercial credit and commercial credit of next term can significantly reduced, and the former is reduced significantly less than the latter. The company’s market position is helpful to get more commercial credit, but financial development has no significant effects on commercial credit. State-owned enterprises for non-standard audit opinion, commercial credit will also be significantly reduced.3. The audit opinion influence on decision-making of management. Management is from company, who is an important policy makers to determine corporate financial reporting compliance or not, and make influence to issue of audit opinion. On the other hand, management may also be affected by the audit opinion. Such as the company in terms of investment, investment activities necessary for the company to get enough capital, and corporate finance under the effect of audit opinions, so the author believes that the audit opinion may also affect the management decision-making. Using the data of Chinese listed companies, this paper finds that if independent audit opinion is non-standard, the independent audit does not exert signal transmission mechanism to alleviate the underinvestment, but as the company’s external governance mechanism to constrain investment behavior, this shows China’s listed companies exists the overinvestment problem, and is correspondence with the existing research conclusion (Xin qingquan, etc.,2007; Wei minghai and Liu jianhua,2007). From the perspective of the corporate finance, audit opinion makes significant impact on the company’s external financing, due to the disclosure of the non-standard audit opinion, the company is restricted through equity financing and debt financing to solve the problem of insufficient investment of funds, makes a negative impact on the company’s investment. Non-standard audit opinions, however, have no significant influence to the company’s internal financing, which is in line with the reality, also shows the corporation financing first make full use of the internal funds from the side, which verified the Pecking Order Theory. In general, the audit opinion impact on external financing only, without affecting the company through its own internal resources to meet the needs of the investment funds.Audit plays an important role in promoting economic development, reform and supervision of enterprises. Currently illegal discipline phenomenon still exists in the field of finance, to improve and standardize market economic order, and create economic credibility, is a focus and hot spot of society as a whole, and important content to optimize the environment of economic development. It should give full play to audit supervision of professional and technical advantages, aimed to standardize the management, improve business efficiency and risk prevention, focus on assets, liabilities and profit and loss, disclose accounting information distortion caused by counterfeit F/S, expose capital efficiency loss caused by misappropriation and release the loss of government financial caused by tax evasion and other issues. We will accelerate the establishment of the social credit system, specify and maintain the socialist market economic order. To promote capital operation efficient, aboveboard and honest, protect and develop advanced productive forces, make the audit work to better serve the economy, social development, and enterprise development. To further enhance the consciousness of advancing with the times, pioneering and innovative, according to the changed of the new situation, new characteristics and new practice, to explore new territory and new methods, make efforts to create a new situation of audit work.For improving the quality of audit opinion information it should devote from two aspects, namely, macro and micro level. At the macro level, all levels of government, ministry of finance, GAO, SEC, etc., as well as the relevant regulatory organization should accurately grasp the new situation and new tasks of audit work, further improve the awareness of the importance and necessity of the audit work, put the audit work on important position of the economic and social development, perfect the system and working mechanism, and improve audit level to serve economic and social development. Certified public accountants and listed companies should also pay attention to the importance of audit. It is an important means to improve CPA’s professional skills and improve operating performance of listed companies. In addition, as aim for serving enterprise and developing economy, focus on key areas of all levels of governments work and the issues of common concern, strive to build independent audit pattern, to further strengthen audit supervision of the key enterprise funds and department, and promote audit policy and standards in the effective implementation. At the micro level, improving the quality of audit opinion information should improve the quality of auditors. To advocate the concept of lifelong learning idea actively, create a good learning atmosphere in the CPA firms. Establish regular audits business communication mechanism, the independent audit can learn from each other and share their experiences. Establish rotation system in CPA firms, train and educate every independent auditor as competent ones. Correctly guide the independent auditors to set up the idea of combining work with study, to adhere to the concept of practice first, not only learned from textbooks but practice. Combining knowledge learned from textbooks and practice, think new problems and new situation of independent audit, consider each company audit projects as a research topic, attach importance of practice to improve competence, cultivate professional insight and sensitivity in the audit practice. Encourage auditors to emancipate the mind, break through the existing mode of thinking, give full play to the subjective initiative, create audit technology, explore audit results, deepen the audit work areas, and expand the audit space. In a word, improve personnel quality and the engagement level at the same time through practice.
Keywords/Search Tags:Audit opinion, Information user, Economic decision
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