This paper empirically investigates the association between codetermination on the audit committee (AC) and audit quality. Using a sample of 655 firm-year observations related to German CDAX companies, our results indicate that the presence of employee representatives on the AC is negatively associated with audit quality. This negative association can also be observed for the percentage of employee representatives serving on the AC. However, our analyses show that the mentioned findings turn insignificant when employee representatives have accounting expertise. In addition, the type of employee representatives seems to influence audit quality differently: our findings turn insignificant for employee representatives who are classified as company outsiders and, thus, expected to be more independent. These findings highlight the importance of accounting expertise and independence for AC members' monitoring effectiveness. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first that analyses the impact of codetermination on the AC on audit quality.

中文翻译：

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审计委员会的共同决定：对审计质量的潜在影响分析

本文实证研究了审计委员会 (AC) 的共同决策与审计质量之间的关联。使用与德国 CDAX 公司相关的 655 家公司年度观察样本，我们的结果表明，员工代表在审计委员会中的存在与审计质量呈负相关。对于在 AC 任职的员工代表的百分比，也可以观察到这种负相关。然而，我们的分析表明，当员工代表具有会计专业知识时，上述发现就变得无关紧要。此外，员工代表的类型似乎对审计质量的影响有所不同：对于被归类为公司外部人员的员工代表，我们的调查结果变得微不足道，因此预计会更加独立。这些发现强调了会计专业知识和独立性对于审计委员会成员监督有效性的重要性。据我们所知，这项研究是第一个分析共同决定对 AC 对审计质量的影响的研究。