Corporate political connection disruption and audit pricing: Evidence from involuntary departure of politically connected independent directors in China under Rule 18

This paper examines how auditors respond to their client firm's political connection disruptions in pricing decisions. Rule 18, released by the Chinese government in 2013, prohibits government officials from serving as corporate directors, leading to forced resignations of politically connected independent directors (PCIDs) in public corporations over subsequent years. Utilizing these involuntary departures as an exogenous shock to a firm's political connection and adopting a propensity score matching and staggered differences in differences design, we document increased audit fees for firms with PCID resignations (treatment firms) relative to the control firms. This increase in audit fees is more pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises or firms with higher political rank PCID departures. In terms of the mechanism, we do not find support for a higher client misreporting risk since treatment firms experience improved financial reporting quality. Instead, we document a significant increase in the probability of financial reporting related government sanctions and corporate lawsuits for these firms, suggesting increased litigation exposures as a potential driver for the audit fee increases. Overall, our results indicate a decreasing effect of client political connections on audit pricing.