Research On The Influence Of The Location Of Accounting Firms And Branch Offices On Audit Quality

The scale expansion of China's accounting firm is the product of the historical stage,which has prompted many firms to take utilitarian mergers to ensure securities qualifications.This merger method has resulted in uneven audit quality among firms and their internal offices.So it is very important to study the influencing factors of audit quality in the accounting firms and its branch offices.From the existing literature,few literatures on the impact of the regional and audit quality of accounting firms,most scholars do not distinguish the differences between the total and the branch,only in the firm's overall level of research,and the results of the study have a big difference.Based on the above realities and academic research,this paper reviews the development process of China's audit industry,analyzes the differences between the firm's office and the branch office through the principal-agent theory,the reputation theory and "the deep pocket" theory,then analyzes the impact of accounting firm's location on audit quality based on the theory of accounting firm's choice.This paper examines main board A-share listed companies which are audited by the accounting firm in the top 20 firms in the 2014-2016.The division of the audited business and the location of firms are carried out by hand,and the paper establishes the multivariate regression model in the total and the branch of accounting firms,descriptive statistics and regression analysis were performed on the samples.The results show that:(1)the quality of the audit of the firm is stronger than that of the branch office.(2)The audit quality of the securities before the merger is stronger than that of the non-securities.(3)There is no significant difference between the local and the audit quality,which it is the non-securities branch offices.(4)There is no significant difference between the local and the audit quality,which it is the total of accounting firms.(5)For the non-securities,there was a significant negative correlation between the location and the quality of the audit.Based on the above conclusions,this paper puts forward some suggestions:(1)The accounting firms should strengthen the unified management of the office,increase the quality control of the branches,and expand the business in different places.The branches are dedicated to the local business specialization.(2)the audited company should strengthen the information disclosure,reduce the degree of information asymmetry;(3)the supervisiondepartment should strengthen supervision of the branches which the business is offside,and publish the audit business guidance policy,with a view to improve the overall accounting firm's audit level.