Mutual fund herding and audit pricing

Yao Ge, Shengmin Hung, Wei Huang, Zheng Qiao and Xin Deng

Research in International Business and Finance, 2023, vol. 64, issue C

Abstract: This study investigates how investor trading behavior affects audit pricing by examining mutual fund herding in specific. When mutual fund managers herd due to information cascade, mimicking incentive, or agency problem, it causes information friction and weakens their monitoring effectiveness. Heightened governance risk is associated with higher audit risk and thus higher audit pricing. In our empirical tests, we find that herding weakens mutual funds’ information advantage and monitoring effectiveness, ultimately resulting in higher audit fees. To mitigate the endogeneity concern, we employ the natural experiment of the 2004 SEC regulation change on mutual fund disclosure frequency to capture exogenous change in herding intensity. Our findings are robust using propensity score matching method and alternative measures. Consistent with our conjecture, we document that firms facing stronger mutual fund herding are associated with deteriorated corporate disclosure quality.

Keywords: Mutual fund; Herding; Information; Audit fees (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G14 G30 M40 M41 M42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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/S0275531923000302
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:riibaf:v:64:y:2023:i:c:s0275531923000302

DOI: 10.1016/j.ribaf.2023.101904

Access Statistics for this article

Research in International Business and Finance is currently edited by T. Lagoarde Segot

More articles in Research in International Business and Finance from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().