Explaining Municipal Audit Costs : Considering the Principal

Studies of audit fees have focused on the audit market and on the organisational costs related to the production of audit. Audit is, however, an activity that is oriented towards the principal of the organisation, and could therefore be expected to vary according to the relationship between the agent and the principal, and vary according to the organisation of the principal. This is the governance issue of auditing. We hypothesize that audit fees are used mainly as a signalling device by agents and as a means of reducing conflict among agents when communicating to principals, be they citizen, the mass media or interest group. The model is tested on data from Swedish municipalities, thus extending the study of audit fees to political organisations. The test results supported the ordinary propositions of organisation and markets, as well as the proposition of the principal, thus suggesting that audit could be managed without managing auditors