Are Audit Partners’ Compensation and Audit Quality related to their consulting revenues?

Abstract

Recent accounting scandals have triggered renewed interest in the debate concerning whether audit firms should be banned from providing consulting services. Compared to the voluminous studies on consulting services to audit clients (i.e., non-audit services,hereafter NAS), little has been done to investigate consulting services to non-audit clients(hereafter CS). This study examines whether audit partners’ revenues from CS are associated with: i) partners’ compensation, and ii) audit quality (AQ), while controlling for revenues from NAS and auditing. We choose the Norwegian setting because of the unique and proprietary data on CS at the audit partner level. Our results provide initial evidence that partners’ compensation is positively associated with their revenues generated from CS. Regarding AQ, our findings indicate no relation between AQ and partners’ revenues from CS. This study contributes to the recent debate on multidisciplinary audit firms and should be of interest to regulators, audit firms, and users of audited financial statements.