Investigating the Effect of Ownership Structure on Audit Fees

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of ownership structure on the audit fees of listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange. In this paper, the variables of family ownership, state ownership, institutional ownership and management ownership are used as ownership structures affecting the audit fees. In this context, four hypotheses were developed to explain the relationship between ownership structure and audit fees. The hypotheses and data were formulated for companies in Tehran Stock Exchange for the period between 2006 and 2011 and compositional data regression model was used to test the hypotheses. The results showed that family ownership and state ownership significantly affect audit fees, but the impact of institutional ownership and management ownership on audit fees is not significant.

Keywords

• Audit fees
• Family ownership
• Institutional Ownership
• managerial ownership
• state ownership