Is It The Intergrated-audit Can Really Lower The Audit Fee?

In 2002,the SOX act as a symbol of the internal control audit,and the internal control audit become a legal obligation of market-listed Companies in the United States.Due to the lack of relevant principles of guidance,the accounting firms met many difficulties in implement of the internal control audit,this situation lead to the progress of audit efficiency and costs increase,the listed company also take heavy burden of it.In view of this situation,the PCAOB has issued Auditing Standard NO.2 and Auditing Standards NO.5,which provides a theoretical guidance for the internal audit of listed companies.That two Standards creatively put forward the concept of "integrated audit",which should be defined by the same accounting firm implement financial reporting audit and internal control audit in order to improve audit efficiency and reduce audit cost.The beginning of "integrated audit" in our country is accompanied by the expansion of the internal control audit.Based on the advanced experience of foreign countries and our own national conditions,in April 2010,the Ministry of Finance joint other four ministries issued the "Internal control audit guidelines",the guidelines explicitly proposed:CPA can chose separate internal control auditing or integrated the internal control audit with financial statements audit.The guidelines as a symbol of the emergence of the "integrated audit".But different from other country,our country does not require the accounting firm to perform the "integrated audit",which also left a room for the separated audit.With the promulgate of the guidelines,scholars begin to research on internal control and integrated audit,the majority reckon that the integrated audit can improve the progress of audit efficiency,reduce the audit cost,but lack of empirical research to support the conclusion.And a part of researcher think that the integrated audit can't lower the audit fee.In view of this background,the first part of the paper mainly include literature review of integrated audit.And secondly,defining and explaining the concept of integrate audit,finally use the knowledge spillover,transaction costs and synergy effects system as the basis theoretical and put forward the hypothesis of this paper:the implementation of "integrated audit" can effectively reduce audit fees.The second part of this paper use the empirical research method,selected the 2013-2015 listed companies in China non-integrated audit company(separate audit)as the research sample,based on size and industry using the 1:1 matching method to get the integrated audit samples.The result of research show that,compared with the non-integrated auditing,listed companies to hire the same accounting firm to perform integrated audit can significantly reduce the audit fees.In the last part of the thesis,in terms of the conclusions of this paper,the writer propose some suggestions for the regulatory authorities,accounting firms and listed companies,finally present deficiencies of this thesis and the future research direction.