Abstract We investigate the impact of audit firm tenure, partner tenure, audit fees, fees for non-audit services and total fees on audit quality, as measured by discretionary accruals. Our sample consists of Spanish non-financial public companies for the years between 2006 and 2013. Results indicate that audit quality increases with audit firm tenure but decreases with partner tenure. Moreover, the level of fees paid to the audit firm seems to have a negative impact on audit quality, which is mainly driven by fees for audit services. In this regard, we do not observe any significant relationship between fees for non-audit services and audit quality. Our results also show that the negative relationship between either long partner tenures or high fees and audit quality does not occur when the tenure with the audit firm is long. Therefore, long audit firm tenures do not only seem to involve higher audit quality ‘per se’, but also moderate the negative effects of partner tenure and audit fees on audit quality. The results of this study, which are robust to several sensitivity checks, may be relevant for the current debate on auditor rotation and the joint provision of audit and non-audit services.

中文翻译：

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审计任期与支付给审计事务所的费用与审计质量的关系

摘要我们调查了酌情应计制对审计公司任期，合伙人任期，审计费，非审计服务费以及总费用对审计质量的影响。我们的样本包括2006年至2013年之间的西班牙非金融上市公司。结果表明，审计质量随着审计公司任期的增加而增加，而随着合伙人任期的降低。此外，支付给审计公司的费用水平似乎对审计质量有负面影响，这主要是由审计服务费用驱动的。在这方面，我们没有发现非审计服务的费用与审计质量之间没有任何显着的关系。我们的结果还表明，当与审计公司的任期较长时，长期合伙人任期或高费用与审计质量之间不会出现负相关关系。因此，长期的审计公司任期似乎不仅涉及更高的审计质量“本身”，而且还减轻了合伙人任期和审计费用对审计质量的负面影响。这项研究的结果对几种敏感性检查均十分可靠，可能与当前有关审计师轮换以及联合提供审计服务和非审计服务的辩论有关。