Effect of Corporate Life Cycle on Audit Fees

In this study, we examine whether and how each stage of corporate life cycle influences audit fees. According to Filatotchev (2008), mature firms are more likely to have higher audit risks than firms in other stages of corporate life cycle. Specifically, mature firms may face a greater range of stakeholder demands and have high agency costs (Miller and Friesen, 1984; Lynall et al., 2003; Kallunki and Silvola, 2008; Aguilera et al., 2008) In addition, managers of mature firms are likely to lack legitimacy and slake resources, so that monitoring and control roles become salient (Filatotchev et al., 2006; Aguilera et al., 2008). Based on these prior studies, we expect that the audit fees are differently affected by the corporate life cycle. The empirical analyses of this study are based on firm-year observations from 2000 to 2013 in the United States of America (USA) and we adopt Dickinson (2011)'s measurement of corporate life cycle. As predicted, we find that corporate life cycle significantly affects audit fees, although we control other firm characteristics, such as firm performance and firm size. Specifically, we find that mature firms are positively associated with audit fees. By contrast, growth firms are negatively associated with audit fees, regardless of control variables of audit fees and size effect. This study illustrates how corporate life cycle shapes different levels of audit fees.