國內會計師產業知識之衡量基礎

The Measurement Unit of Auditor Industry Expertise in Taiwan

本文針對國內特有之審計環境，測試會計師事務所內部組別產業知識與客戶盈餘品質之關聯性。實證結果發現，組別的產業知識主要由本身實際查核經驗而來，事務所並未提供組別產業知識，亦或提供產業知識不足。此外，在以組別為對象並採用多個產業知識衡量指標進行測試後，大致發現當組別產業知識越豐富，客戶的裁決性應計數絕對值越低，顯示組別知識越強，其客戶的盈餘品質越佳。另一發現是，組別產業佔有率對客戶裁決性應計數絕對值的影響為非線性（呈倒U形態），即客戶的裁決性應計項絕對值會先隨著組別產業知識的累積而增加，然後再遞減。此一結果代表著組別的產業知識必須累積達一定門檻，才能使得裁決性應計數絕對值降低。

Based on Taiwan’s unique auditing environment, this study examines the relationship between the absolute level of discretionary accruals (DAC) and industry expertise of audit group within Big 5. Our evidence indicates that the auditing industry expertise in Taiwan is primarily based on the auditing experience of audit group, not of audit firm. Besides, we use multiple proxies for industry expertise of audit group and find clients of industry specialized auditors have lower DAC than those of non-specialized. This finding indicates that clients of industry specialized auditors have higher earnings quality than the others. The other finding is that the effect of specialization of audit group on DAC is nonlinear (inverted U-shaped form): absolute discretionary accruals increase slightly at lower level of specialization of audit group, but decline rapidly thereafter. The result in our nonlinear model suggests that the benefit to specialization occurs only after the audit group achieves a threshold level of industry expertise.