Abstract:
This study aims to investigate the determinants of the audit fees within the NYSE-quoted companies. Our objective is to prove the existence of a circular causality in the connection between audit fees and the financial performance of a NYSE-quoted company. The analysis is based on a sample of the first 100 companies (NYSE quoted) of the Top 500 Fortune, except for the companies in the investment funds and insurances field. In order to test and validate the work hypotheses (H1: the level of the audit fees is mainly influenced by the company’s capacity to continue its activity; H2: the prestige of the audited company contributes to the decrease of the audit fees; H3: the reduced fees level, paid by the customer audited by one of the Big4 companies in this exercise, contributes to the future prestige increase), the linear regression analysis (simple and multiple) and the variance analysis (ANOVA) have been used as methods of data analysis. As a result of hypothesis testing it was found a circular causality, bidirectional, on the level of the relationship between audit fees and financial performance. The statistical software programs SPSS 19.0 and AMOS 16.0 have been used for data processing.
