The Effect of Pure Audit Firms, Nonprovision of Nonaudit Services to Audit Clients, and a Statutory Fee Schedule on Audit Quality Perceptions

Abstract

An ongoing debate revolves around instruments for enhancing the audit quality perceptions of financial statements users. Therefore, we investigate two measures that lack empirical evidence, but could theoretically improve perceived audit quality. These are a nonprovision of NAS (either by pure audit firms, or a nonprovision of NAS to audit clients) and a statutory fee schedule. We conduct an experiment with German bankers and nonprofessional investors. The results indicate that a nonprovision of NAS to audit and to all clients (i.e., pure audit case) increases perceived audit quality only if the audit firm sets audit fees internally. Moreover, a statutory fee schedule only increases perceptions of audit quality in the case of a simultaneous provision of audit services and NAS. Consequently, instead of full-banning NAS, an alternative approach would be to introduce a statutory fee schedule that would still permit the provision of NAS while adhering to existing caps.