The size of audit firm has been used as a surrogate for audit quality,
that is, large audit firms have a reputation to safeguard and therefore
will ensure an independent quality audit service. Larger audit
firms have better financial resources and research facilities, superior
technology and more talented employees to undertake large company
audits than do smaller audit firms. Their larger client portfolios
enable them to resist management pressure, whereas smaller
firms provide more personalized services due to limited client portfolios
and are expected to succumb to management requirements
(Lys and Watts 1994). Therefore, the size of audit firm is an important
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characteristic that reflects auditor independence. Thus, the issue of
maintaining auditor independence is more crucial for smaller firms
than larger firms. A large body of research examines the relationship
between audit firm size and audit quality. Those studies can be
traced back to the seminal work by DeAngelo (1981) and Dye (1993).
DeAngelo argues that large audit firms are more independent and
hence of higher quality both because of advanced techniques and
more wealth at risk upon audit failure. On the other hand, Dye (1993)
argues that investors are more likely to sue a large audit firm than a
small audit firm upon untruthful disclosure for their ‘deep pocket’.
Both theories forecast a positive association between audit size and
quality.
Empirically, many researchers have tested this association by different
proxies of audit quality. For example, St. Pierre and Anderson
(1984) and Palmrose (1988) use the frequency of law suit against
audit firms as a measure of audit quality. Those authors found that
larger audit firms have a lower incidence of litigations and thus
higher quality. Reynolds and Francis (2001) and Craswell, Stokes,
and Laughton (2002) provide evidence that larger audit firms tend
to be stricter in issuing opinions. In another research, Teoh and
Wong (1993) measured market perception of audit quality with earnings
response coefficients and found that investors show more dramatic
responses to reports audited by the Big 8 audit firms. DeAngelo
(1981) suggested that users of financial statements differentiate the
credibility of information content in the statements. However, Krishnan
(2005) found evidence to the contrary and documented that
audit quality differed between and within audit firms