The impact of economic sanctions on audit pricing

Oksana Kim

Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, 2021, vol. 17, issue 2

Abstract: This study extends the literature on the association between business risk and audit pricing by exploring the economic sanctions of 2014 imposed by the Western community on Russia. The sanctions targeted predominantly Russian companies with state ownership, potentially leading to increased business risk for these companies. I find support for the notion that, post-2014, audit fees increased in the case of Russian state-owned companies. This evidence suggests that auditors passed on costs, arising from sanctions-driven increase in audit risk, to their clients. Further, the Russian government responded to sanctions by encouraging state-owned companies to terminate their audits conducted by auditing firms with foreign capital and/or foreign partnerships—Big 4 firms—meaning these firms were likely to lose their lion’s share of the Russian audit and consulting revenues. Nevertheless, I do not find evidence that Big 4 firms started to offer services at a discount to retain lucrative contracts with leading Russian companies. In contrast, the results indicate that Big 4 firms charged companies with state ownership higher fees for their audits, following the imposition of sanctions.

Keywords: Audit fees; Big 4 firms; Economic sanctions; State ownership; Russian public companies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1815566921000151
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jocaae:v:17:y:2021:i:2:s1815566921000151

DOI: 10.1016/j.jcae.2021.100257

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics is currently edited by Agnes C.S. Cheng, P. Clarkson, F.A. Gul, Zoltan Matolcsy, Dan Simunic and Ben Srinidhi

More articles in Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().