The Effect of Mandatory Audit Firm Rotation : Experimental Investigations

我们研究的目的是检验强制性留任和轮换要求对审计师独立性和审计市场的影响。为了尽可能减少偏见，实验研究采用了学生被试的方式。在第一个实验中，同时引入强制性留任和轮换要求是必要的，以提高审计师的独立性。然而，在最后两个实验中，调查是以更适当的方式进行的，采用保留或轮换要求或同时采用两者都不会对审计师独立性产生太大影响。此外，轮换要求可以使审计师的更换更加频繁，并导致创造更活跃的审计市场。此外，在非强制性轮换期间，简单的轮换要求可能会降低审计师的独立性，并可能导致效率低下。

The aim of our research is to examine the effect of mandatory retention and rotation requirements on auditor independence and audit markets. Experimental investigations are conducted by using student-subjects in order to be as less biased as possible. In the first experiment introducing both mandatory retention and rotation requirements simultaneously is necessary so as to enhance auditor independence. In the last 2 experiments, where the investigations are conducted in more proper manner, however, adopting either retention or rotation requirement or both simultaneously doesn't have much impact on auditor independence. In addition a rotation requirement can make auditor change much more frequent and leads to a creation of more active audit markets. Furthermore a simple rotation requirement can decrease auditor independence in the periods where rotation is not mandatory and may cause ineffectiveness.