Author: Fei Kang

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 87

ISBN-13: 9781267419200

I examine whether and how family firms' unique ownership structure and agency problems affect their choice of industry-specialist auditors and the level of audit fees. Following prior literature, I define family firms as those in which members of the founding family continue to hold positions in top management, sit on the board, or are blockholders. Compared to non-family firms, family firms are subject to less severe Type I agency problems due to family owners' long-term horizon and close monitoring of managers, but face more severe Type II agency conflicts due to the concentrated ownership and excess of control rights over cash flow rights held by family owners. Using data from the S & P 1500 firms, I find that family firms are more likely to appoint industry-specialist auditors and incur lower audit fees than non-family firms. The results suggest that family firms have strong incentives to hire industry specialists to signal the quality of their financial reporting due to the Type II agency problems, and that they have lower assessed audit risk and less demand for external audit services due to the mitigated Type I agency problems. My additional analysis shows that, compared to family firms without dual-class shares, family firms with dual-class shares have higher demand for industry-specialist auditors to signal firms' disclosure quality. Furthermore, my results indicate that, when family members serve as CEOs, firms have a stronger tendency to hire industry specialists and to pay lower audit fees. In addition, although family firms have a higher likelihood of hiring industry-specialist auditors than non-family firms, I find no evidence that family firms purchase more non-audit services from their incumbent auditors.