题目：Federal Judge Ideology and Auditor Reporting Behavior

主讲人：齐保垒，教授，西安交通大学管理学院

主持人：杨丹，副教授，北京师范大学经济与工商管理学院

地点：后主楼1610

时间：12月6日 10:00-12:00

摘要：This paper investigates how the ex-ante litigation risk influences auditor reporting behavior. Drawing on the political theory of judicial decision making, this paper uses federal judge ideology as the proxy of ex-ante litigation risk. We find that auditors are more likely to issue going concern audit opinions to financially distressed clients if the engagement office located in more liberal Circuit Court of Appeal. The results are robust when controlling the circuit court judge ideology where audit firms’ and clients’ headquarters located, as well as state liability regimes. In the cross-sectional tests, we find the results are more significant for the sub-sample of Big4 and the sub-sample with high litigation risks. Using the change of federal judge ideology in circuit courts as quasi-experiment, we find auditors become more conservative on reporting decision when circuit courts shifting from conservative to liberal, while auditors become less conservative on reporting decision when circuit courts shifting from liberal to conservative. In addition, we find that auditors charge higher audit fees and spend longer time on engagements if engagement offices located in more liberal circuits. Taken together, our findings suggest that federal judge ideology has a distinguishable effect on auditor reporting behavior.

主讲人简介：齐保垒，博士，西安交通大学管理学院会计与财务系教授、博导，入选陕西省首批“青年杰出人才”支持计划、财政部会计领军人才（学术类）、西安交通大学“青年拔尖人才”。长期从事审计、公司治理与财务报告信息质量领域的科研与教学工作，研究成果发表在《The Accounting Review》、《Accounting Horizons》、《International Journal of Accounting》、《Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting》、《The International Journal of Financial Management and Accounting》、《Accounting and Finance》、《Asia-Pacific Journal of Accounting and Economics》、《Decision Support System》、《Journal of Applied Business Research》、《管理世界》、《南开管理评论》、《管理科学》、《管理评论》等国内外著名期刊。