We examine the implications of auditor education for audit quality and audit pricing. We exploit a novel institutional setting in the UK, where auditors major in many different degrees at university and signing auditors are identifiable. Using hand-collected data for a large sample of signing auditors, we establish two main findings. First, auditors whose degrees have a quantitative orientation are associated with higher accruals quality and higher audit fees than those with more qualitative degrees. Second, auditors with degrees directly relevant to accounting are also associated with higher accruals quality and increased audit fees relative to auditors with unrelated university degrees in qualitative subjects. Overall, our study provides evidence that heterogeneity in auditor education is associated with divergent audit outcomes.

我们研究了审计师教育对审计质量和审计定价的影响。我们在英国利用了一种新颖的制度环境，在该环境中，大学里主修许多不同学位的审计员和签约审计员都是可识别的。使用手工收集的大量签名审计员样本的数据，我们确定了两个主要发现。首先，与具有更多定性学位的审计师相比，具有定量导向学位的审计师与更高的应计质量和更高的审计费用相关联。其次，与在定性科目中拥有不相关大学学位的审计师相比，拥有与会计直接相关学位的审计师也与更高的应计质量和增加的审计费用有关。总的来说，我们的研究提供了证据，证明审计师教育的异质性与不同的审计结果有关。