Industry Differences in the Production of Audit Services.

SUMMARY: This study tests for across-industry differences in the client characteristics which drive the number of hours of various grades of professional labor (partners, managers, seniors, and staff) used in audit service production. When auditing a client's financial statements, we assume that an audit firm uses a least cost combination of labor resources to produce a constant level of assurance. The data for the tests were collected by questionnaire from partners-in-charge of 108 financial services client audits and 249 industrial client audits performed in the U.S. by a major public accounting firm in 1989. We find that client size and complexity of operations are the major determinants of audit hours in both industries. However, the appropriate measure of clients' cash flow risk varies across industries. While leverage and the fact that equity and/or debt securities are publicly held are the best risk measures for industrial clients, the incidence of operating losses is the best measure for financial clients. Also, industrial clients' internal controls have negligible effects on audit production, while the strength of internal controls for financial services clients has significant effects on labor hours utilized. Finally, reliance on the internal auditors of financial clients results in the use of fewer staff hours but more higher-level hours, with no net effect on audit fees.