The Comparison of Separated Audit and Integrated Audit:Based on the Inspection of the Audit Cost and Audit Quality

The listed companies in US should employ their financial report auditor to express an opinion on their internal control. However,the listed companies in China can employ another auditor which is different with their financial report auditor. There are two kinds of audit models in the Chinese audit market: the separated audit and the integrated audit. However,there is little empirical evidence to suppport the integrated audit could spend less audit fees in internal control auditing in theory. This institutional arrangement of Chinese audit market gives us a chance to test the difference between the separated audit and the integrated audit. This paper compares separated audit and integrated audit based on the audit cost and audit quality. The research results show that internal control audit costs under integrated audit are significantly lower than thoese under separated audit,but there is no evidence that integrated audit are different with separated audit about audit quality. The separated audit violates the principle of cost-benefit which is worth concerning and rethinking for listed companies and supervision department.