Audit and Non-Audit Fees in Germany – The Impact of Audit Market Characteristics

We investigate the impact of three German audit market characteristics on audit and non-audit fees for the years 2005-2007. We find no relation between audit and non-audit fees, which suggests that audit and non-audit fee determination in Germany does not indicate any particular impairment of auditor independence. Further, we find that fee-cutting for initial audit engagements depends signifi-cantly on client size. We find no evidence of network-related fee reporting bias due to the ambiguous phrasing of German fee disclosure requirements, which implies that German fee data are internationally comparable.