嘉宾介绍：朱爱勇，西南财经大学会计学院教授，入选西南财经大学“光华百人计划”。2014年获得德国曼海姆大学经济学博士学位，博士期间2010-2011耶鲁大学访问，2012-2014德国央行访问学者。2014-2022年在武汉大学经济与管理学院任职，2019-2021德国美因茨大学访问教授。主要研究方向为资本市场的审计需求与审计竞争，先后在Review of Accounting Studies, The Accounting Review等期刊上发表论文，同时主持国家自然科学基金青年项目等。
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文章摘要：This study provides novel evidence on the magnitude of switching costs in auditing. We use a discrete choice approach to infer switching costs from clients’ auditor choices. The demand estimation reveals that switching costs matter and that they differ by the direction with switching from non-Big 4 to Big 4 auditors being associated with the greatest switching costs. Counterfactual analyses of forced auditor switches indicate that switching costs are substantial, ranging from 0.7 billion US dollars (14.2% of audit fees) to 1.2 billion US dollars (24.0% of audit fees) when aggregated across all clients. Counterfactual analyses of voluntary auditor switches show that the audit market would become highly dynamic and more concentrated if switching costs were removed. Furthermore, clients would gain consumer surplus of up to 306 million US dollars (5.4% of audit fees) in this scenario. Overall, our study documents the important role of switching costs to understand audit market dynamics.
