Civil Liability Constraints And Audit Quality Of Accounting Firms

Since the Supreme People’s Court announced to accept securities misrepresentation cases in 2002,securities misrepresentation cases of listed companies in my country have gradually increased,and the audit quality of accounting firms has been widely questioned by the public.The firm is not only the undertaker and practitioner of auditing business,but also the main bearer of administrative responsibility,civil liability and criminal responsibility,which determines the audit quality and operation direction of the firm.But in our country,there has always been the phenomenon of "lighting civil and paying more attention to administration" in the legal responsibility of certified public accountants.In recent years,the state and the government have paid more and more attention to the civil liability of accounting firms.The Securities Law revised in 2019 has a special chapter on investor protection to strengthen civil liability.Subsequently,the 2022 Judicial Interpretation for Misrepresentation was promulgated to promote civil compensation.The implementation has achieved a major breakthrough in civil liability at the institutional level.At the same time,countries and regions attach great importance to the rule of law.The 19 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed the goal of deepening the practice of ruling the country by law and building a country under the rule of law.The overall legal level has been continuously improved,but the level of regional legalization construction is still uneven,which affects the efficiency and effectiveness of law enforcement.Therefore,this thesis discusses the impact of civil liability on audit quality from the perspective of changes in the legal environment,and the role of the legal environment in this impact.This thesis takes the A-share listed companies from 2016 to 2020 as the research object,takes the audit quality as the explained variable,and takes the civil lawsuit as the explanatory variable to test the impact of civil liability on the audit quality.Further considering that the implementation of civil liability needs to be realized in a certain legal environment,or in other words,the effect and intensity of the implementation of civil liability are also very different under different legal environments.This thesis further studies the impact of external legal environment on civil liability and audit quality.impact on the relationship between them.The legal environment part is carried out from two perspectives: one is the vertical legal environment change,which is compared before and after the new Securities Law;the other is the horizontal legal environment difference,which is measured by the difference in the level of regional legalization.It examines the moderating role of legal environment in the relationship between civil liability and audit quality from vertical and horizontal perspectives.The innovation of this thesis is embodied in the following three aspects: First,from the perspective of the legal environment,this thesis studies the adjustment function of the new law revision and the regional legal level on the effect of civil liability investigation under the legal proceedings,which provides ideas for the lawmakers to give full play to the punishment effect of civil liability and improve the overall law enforcement level,thereby enhancing the efficiency of the audit market;Second,new content,this thesis enriches the relevant literature on the role of civil liability in the audit quality of accounting firms,helps to deepen the understanding of the outside factors and ways of adjustment of the effect of legal proceedings,and provides reference for accounting firms to deal with the practice problems brought by civil liability.Third,the new research object,based on the data of specific judicial cases,analyzes the impact of civil liability on audit quality from both horizontal and vertical angles.