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This study aims to examine the underlying determinants that may influence external audit fees paid by Emirati nonfinancial companies listed on Dubai Financial Market (DFM).

Data used in this study are mainly collected from the 2011 annual reports and corporate governance reports published by the Emirati nonfinancial companies listed on DFM. Backward regression analysis is used to measure the impact of a set of company characteristics on Emirati non-financial listed firm’s audit delays.

The findings pointed to a significant and positive association between audit fees and each of corporate size and audit committee independence variables. A significant and negative relationship has been detected between external audit fees and business complexity. The findings also revealed that audit fees are not significantly associated with company’s profitability, risk, industry type, status of audit firm and audit report lag.

The paper helps in expanding limited existing literature about the determinants of audit fees in the Arab and Middle East countries generally and in the UAE context particularly. No prior attempt had been made to investigate the determinants of audit fees paid by Emirati firms listed on DFM because the disclosure of audit fees services provided by external auditors only became effective after April 30, 2010. The findings of the study may be generalized to other Arab countries, particularly neighboring Gulf Cooperation Council states, that have a similar socio-cultural environment.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perceptions of a sample of Jordanian external auditors for the importance given by them to a number of factors which may influence their reliance on an internal auditor during their external audit. The paper also examines the relationship, if any, between the degree of reliance on the internal and external audit fees.

A sample of 100 external auditors is employed to investigate the perceptions of external auditors as to the importance given by them to a number of factors which may influence their reliance on an internal auditor during their external audit. Also, a cross‐sectional multiple regression analysis is conducted to examine the impact of this reliance on audit fees.

The results of the paper indicate that external auditors in Jordan consider the objectivity, competence and work performance of internal auditors as very important factors affecting their reliance decisions. It is found that “objectivity” had the highest mean score (4.353), followed by “competence” (4.188) and “work performance” (4.156). The results of the multiple regression analysis indicated that the size of the audited company is the most important variable in explaining the variation in audit fees paid by the sample companies. As for the reliance variable, it is found insignificant.

It is believed that no previous research has examined these issues on the basis of Jordanian data. Thus, the current paper aims to extend the literature on these topics on a developing country with different characteristics. The results of this paper will be of concern to companies in their attempt to reduce external audit fees. Audit firms may also benefit from the paper in terms of reducing the efforts of external auditors due to the understanding and cooperation between external and internal auditors.

The purpose of this study is to examine the association between external audit fees, and board and audit committee characteristics of 736 Malaysian listed firms. It is hypothesised that good corporate governance practices reduce auditors' risk assessments, resulting in lower audit fees. Drawing on the existence of a clearly identifiable ethnic domination of board membership and ownership of Malaysian listed firms, the study also posits that Bumiputera‐controlled firms pay higher audit fees because of their weaker governance practices.

This study employs a cross‐sectional analysis of 736 firms listed on the Bursa Malaysia for the financial year ending in 2003. Multiple regression analysis is used to estimate the relationships proposed in the hypotheses.

Overall, the results of this study reveal that external audit fees are positively and significantly related to board independence, audit committee expertise, and the frequency of audit committee meetings. The study also finds a strong negative association between external audit fees and Bumiputera‐owned firms. An additional analysis into the internal governance structures of firms in the sample show that Bumiputera firms practice more favourable corporate governance practices compared to their non‐Bumiputera counterparts.

This study is a unique contribution in that it provides data on corporate governance practices in Malaysia for a large sample in the period after the corporate governance reforms taken by Malaysian capital market regulators and participants. Previous studies have shown that Bumiputera‐controlled firms pay higher audit fees than non‐Bumiputera‐controlled firms. These studies have not tested theoretical explanations for this fee differential. A theoretical explanation provided in the current study is that Bumiputera‐controlled firms pay higher audit fees than non‐Bumiputera‐controlled firms partially because of differences in corporate governance practices. The study finds conflicting results with previous research suggesting that corporate governance practices have changed in Malaysia since the amendments of Bursa Malaysia Listing Requirements, 2001.

This study aims to examine the effect on audit efficiency of outsourced internal audit function (IAF) providers with industry and/or firm-specific expertise. Drawing on relevant studies from external and internal audit literature, the authors assume that such IAF providers are associated with greater audit efficiency as proxied by audit report lag and audit fees.

Based on a sample of firms listed on the Omani capital market during 2005–2019, the pooled regressions are used to test the developed hypotheses. The authors use the market share approach to identify outsourced IAF industry expertise providers and tenure to measure the firm-specific expertise of outsourced IAF providers.

The authors find that industry outsourced IAF providers are not associated with shorter audit report lag and lower audit fees. The authors also find that firm-specific expertise outsourced IAF providers are associated with a greater reduction in audit report lag and audit fees. These conclusions are robust under a battery of analyses. The significant contribution of firm-specific expertise outsourced IAF providers to audit efficiency is incremental when abnormal audit report lag and audit fees analysis is conducted.

The results are the first to attest to the contribution of outsourced IAF with firm-specific expertise. They also show that industry expertise held by outsourced IAF providers does not contribute to audit efficiency.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of internal audit function (IAF) use on earnings quality and external audit fees using empirical data collected from the New Zealand (NZ) setting.

Applying institutional theory as the underlying framework, this study examines an IAF’s ability to demonstrate legitimacy, which will shed light to the functions long-term survival. Using a unique data set from the NZ setting, which combines information obtained from “The Institute of Internal Auditors of New Zealand” with empirical firm data collected from publicly available sources, multivariate analysis is performed to test the prediction that IAF use is associated with earnings quality, measured using discretionary accruals, and external audit fees.

There is strong positive association between IAF use and external audit fees, which supports the complementary controls view, where better internal controls increase audit fees by increasing the demand for scope of external audit work. The authors find no significant relationship between IAF use and earnings quality, which is not entirely surprising.

The aim is to empirically test the IAF value proposition and to delve deeper into the black box of IAF value drivers. Given the size of the NZ economy and limitations of data availability, total sample size used in this study is relatively modest. However, the analysis does yield significant results. Apart from academic contribution to knowledge, this study offers a profound list of practical contributions. Practitioners will be interested to learn about the IAF value proposition from an empirical viewpoint. Senior management (SM) will obtain value from the outcomes when contemplating IAF investment and sourcing decisions. Regulators will be inherently interested in whether IAFs should be mandated.

The aim is to empirically test IAF value proposition and to delve deeper into the black box of IAF value drivers. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first NZ-based academic investigation which examines the relationship between IAF use and earnings quality. Apart from academic contribution to knowledge, this study offers a profound list of practical contributions. Practitioners will be interested to learn about the IAF value proposition from an empirical viewpoint. SM will obtain value from the outcomes when contemplating IAF investment and sourcing decisions. Regulators will be inherently interested in whether IAFs should be mandated.

This study aims to examine the relationship between external audit fees and the adherence of internal audit with the International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing (ISPPIA), i.e. whether such adherence has a relation with lower or higher audit fees.

Data were gathered from the annual reports and 229 chief internal auditors (CIAs) from UK companies listed on the London Stock Exchange.

The result suggests that, in fact, higher external audit fee is related with adherence with both attribute and performance standards. Also, there is an association between audit fees and budget for the internal audit with longer tenure of the CIA.

Given the lack of attention to the potential impact of the ISPPIA on audit fees by previous researchers, any insight provided by the study in this regard will represent a valuable contribution to the literature in complementing what already exists and pointing the way to further research opportunities.

The main objective of this study is to investigate factors influencing the amount of external audit fees in Kuwait. Of particular interest is the examination of the potential effect of the client size, client complexity, client risk, and the size of the audit firm on external audit fees.

An audit fee model is used to examine the effect of audit client size, client complexity, client risk, and the size of the audit firm on the amount of audit fees for a sample of audit engagements performed in the Kuwaiti audit market.

The study's results indicate that the amount of external audit fees is significantly influenced by the audit client size, liquidity ratio, and profitability ratio. The results, however, do not provide evidence of a significant relation between audit fees and the number of audit locations, or the size of the audit firm.

This study is original since it is the first to empirically investigate factors influencing the pricing of audit services in Kuwait.

The paper aims to examine the direction of the relationship between a firm's internal audit function and its external audit fees, extending a previous study by Goodwin‐Stewart and Kent, which used data from 2000.

The paper uses publicly available information to analyse the relationship between internal audit and audit fees.

The findings support Goodwin‐Stewart and Kent's result that the existence of an internal audit function in a firm has a significantly positive relationship with audit fees. In fact, the strength of this relationship has increased since 2000.

The study focuses on the top 300 public companies from a market capitalisation perspective and, therefore, the results may not be generalisable to other smaller public companies or to private firms. Second, the dichotomous experimental variable used in the study (existence of internal audit) might not be an ideal measure of internal audit usage since it may not be sensitive enough to capture all the variation in external audit fees. The findings suggest that companies use internal audit and audit fees in a complementary way to strengthen their overall control/operating environment.

Although the study extends and validates work already completed by Goodwin‐Stewart and Kent, the true value of its result is that users can use publicly available information to determine that firms with an internal audit function are more likely to use it in a complementary way with audit fees, thereby potentially indicating a commitment by that firm to a stronger monitoring/control environment.

This study is motivated by the lack of internal audit function (IAF) research and by the call for research on the impact of dominant owners such as family shareholders on audit fees and the demand for audit quality. This study aims to examine the impact of the IAF budget on the selection of industry-specialist auditors and on audit fees, particularly in companies with family-controlled shareholders, a feature unique to Malaysia.

Data of Malaysian-listed companies during the period 2009-2012 are used. To examine the relationships, logit and ordinary least square regressions are used. Several additional analyses are conducted to assess the robustness of the main results, including alternative measures of specialist auditor and family ownership, endogeneity problems and self-selection bias.

The results show that the IAF budget is positively related to hiring industry-specialist auditors and audit fees. However, family companies are less likely to support the positive association between IAF costs and engage specialist auditors than non-family companies. In addition, a complementary association between the costs of IAF and audit fees for both family and non-family companies was found. Finally, the results show that there is a negative association between family ownership and the ratio of IAF costs to audit fees, suggesting that family companies rely more upon external auditing than internal auditing.

The contribution of this study is to provide an empirical evidence about the tradeoff between IAF and both industry-specialist auditors and audit fees with considering the moderating impact of family-ownership shareholdings. This issue is yet to be examined, and it provides implications for policymakers and practitioners, as it offers insights into the importance of investing in IAF toward hiring industry-specialist auditors and pricing the audit services.

This paper aims to explore the impact of product market competition (PMC) on companies’ investment in external auditing.

This paper applies a conceptual framework derived from demand–supply analysis and a panel data set of 2,263 listed manufacturing companies in China covering the period 2012–2019. In the assessment of PMC, this study measures industry-level competition intensity and company-specific market power separately.

Industries appear to engage in a lower average level of external auditing if industrial competition intensity is either too high or too low. Similarly, companies spend less on external auditing if their market power is either too strong or too weak, and the company-level inverted U-shaped relationship is much more evident in industries with weak PMC.

This paper shows that a company’s external audit strategy is affected by the level of competition it faces in its market. The findings of this paper can improve the current linear PMC–auditing theoretical framework and provide insights into the strategic auditing of listed companies in China. The findings also have significant implications for policy recommendations regarding corporate governance and market scrutiny regulations.