caa a22 4500 463187636 CHVBK 20180406164858.0 cr unu---uuuuu 170326e20070401xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s11156-006-0014-7 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s11156-006-0014-7 The empirical relationship between ownership characteristics and audit fees [Elektronische Daten] [Santanu Mitra, Mahmud Hossain, Donald Deis] The present study examines the empirical relationship between ownership characteristics and audit fees. The basic premise is that the level of ownership sophistication and the extent to which ownership is large and substantial impact the effectiveness of stockholder monitoring on corporate affairs including the financial reporting process. Furthermore, high managerial ownership firms may experience a decline in agency problems in financial reporting due to a decrease in managerial propensity to misreport financial results. By employing a cross-sectional least squares regression analysis for a sample of 358 New York Stock Exchange-listed firms audited by the Big Five auditors, we find evidence of a significantly positive relationship between diffused institutional stock ownership (i.e., having less than 5% individual shareholding) and audit fees, and a significantly negative relationship between institutional blockholder ownership (i.e., having 5% or more individual shareholding) and audit fees. Finally, we document that managerial stock ownership is negatively associated with audit fees. We do not, however, find evidence of any relationship between noninstitutional blockholder ownership (with at least 5% individual stock ownership) and audit fees. The study's main results hold in various specification tests including when the effects of board-related and audit committee variables are factored in the analysis. Based on the observed relationship between the ownership variables and audit fees, we suggest that the ownership characteristics of a firm as a part of its governance mechanism constitute an important determinant of audit fees. Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 2007 Diffused institutional stock ownership nationallicence Institutional and noninstitutional blockholder ownership nationallicence Managerial stock ownership nationallicence Audit fees nationallicence Agency problem nationallicence Corporate Governance nationallicence Mitra Santanu Department of Accounting, School of Business Administration, Wayne State University, 48202, Detroit, MI, USA aut Hossain Mahmud Department of Accounting, Fogelman College of Business, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, USA aut Deis Donald Ennis & Virginia Joslin Endowed Chair in Accounting, College of Business, Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi, 6300 Ocean Drive, 78412, Corpus Christi, TX, USA aut Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting Kluwer Academic Publishers-Plenum Publishers; http://www.springer-ny.com 28/3(2007-04-01), 257-285 0924-865X 28:3<257 2007 28 11156 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11156-006-0014-7 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11156-006-0014-7 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Mitra Santanu Department of Accounting, School of Business Administration, Wayne State University, 48202, Detroit, MI, USA aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Hossain Mahmud Department of Accounting, Fogelman College of Business, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, USA aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Deis Donald Ennis & Virginia Joslin Endowed Chair in Accounting, College of Business, Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi, 6300 Ocean Drive, 78412, Corpus Christi, TX, USA aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting Kluwer Academic Publishers-Plenum Publishers; http://www.springer-ny.com 28/3(2007-04-01), 257-285 0924-865X 28:3<257 2007 28 11156 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer