证监会立案调查与审计质量提升

以往对审计师行政执法的研究都聚焦于监管机构的处罚，而忽略了处罚之前的另一重要事件:立案调查。本文基于2001-2015年中国证监会发布的行政处罚公告，手工搜集了对应的立案调查日期，从注册会计师（CPA）个体层面实证检验了立案调查对审计质量的影响。具体而言，本文着重考察了涉案CPA在立案调查日前后的审计质量变化。我们的研究发现，立案调查后审计质量有显著提升:审计客户操控性应计项的绝对值显著下降，出具非标准审计意见的概率显著上升。作为对比，我们还考察了涉案CPA在处罚公告日前后的审计质量变化，但并未发现显著变化。总体证据表明证监会行政执法有效地促进了审计质量的提升，但这种监管效果主要体现在立案调查前后。

Prior studies on the effect of regulator monitoring on audit quality focus on regulator sanctions but ignore regulator investigations. We hand-collected data on the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) investigations announced during 2001-2015 to examine the impact of CSRC investigations on audit quality of the targeted partners. We find that, after the audit partners are investigated by the CSRC, their clients exhibit lower absolute value of discretionary accruals and the partners are more likely to issue modified audit opinions. Our results suggest that CSRC investigations lead to improvement in audit quality of the partners involved in the investigations. In contrast, CSRC sanctions have a relatively weak effect on the audit quality of the involved partners. Overall, our study provides evidence that CSRC monitoring helps to improve the audit quality of audit partners, and the effect manifests around the CSRC investigations.