An Empirical Study of the Impact of Auditor’s Gender and Tenure on Debt Cost.

企業之營運當中，其營運資金有部份需仰賴企業外部之投資者，大多數公司會以發債的方式進行籌措。債權人在投入資金前，其所能信賴的即企業對外之財務報表。但債權人對於管理階層所編製的財務報表可靠性會產生不信任感，此時便需要會計師的查核意見；然而在安隆案後，社會大眾對於會計師的獨立性信賴崩盤，Arthur Andersen為安隆公司提供簽證服務長達二十七年，此舉引發人們對於會計師任期長短所造成的獨立性疑慮；此外，安隆案的揭弊者Sherron Watkins，於2002年登上了時代雜誌的女性風雲人物，在一般認知中，女性的行事風格較男性保守也較有道德感，且女性較可能因為偏好道德上的判斷而勇於挑戰現實中的壓力。When it comes to managing an enterprise, most of the companies would rely on outside investors to supply them with operation funds. Companies would raise funds by issuing bonds. In order to win the trust from these investors, management team has to provide them with impressive financial statements. Financial statements represent the financial affairs and the state of management of enterprises in a period or the end of the year. Due to the distrust of the financial statement reliability may occurred by creditors, opinions from accountants become necessary. However, the scandal of Enron Corporation had inflicted the trust from the public. People started to concern about the independency of accountant because the engagement service that Arthur Anderson had provided for Enron was last for 27 years. Generally, people consider women are more conservative and full of moral sense than men. Women may prefer challenging the pressure of reality due to the judgement with moral sense. Moreover, Time Magazine named Sherron Watkins, the whistleblower of the Enron scandal, “Person of the Year” for 2002. Therefore, whether the gender difference may affect the final opinions that accountants provide, becomes another key point in my research. This study aims to examine the effect of debt cost with elements as follow: auditor’s gender and tenure. With a sample of ordinary corporate bonds published by listed and over-the-counter companies during 2000-2014. The results show that companies audited by female accountants has less debt cost and auditor’s tenure has a positive association with debt cost