Board Characteristics, Audit Committee Independence and Auditor Fees: An Empirical Analysis of Indian Corporate Sector

This paper examines the effect of level of corporate governance measured in terms of the board of directors' and the audit committee's characteristics on auditor fees in the Indian corporate sector. In particular, we examine the effect of the board of directors' and the audit committee's independence, diligence, expertise and size on audit fee, non-audit fee and the ratio of non-audit fee to audit fee for the top 100 companies listed on the National Stock Exchange for the financial year 2012-13. We hypothesize that an independent, diligent, experienced and a larger board of directors require higher audit quality and hence higher audit and non-audit fees. However, there is no effect of audit committee's characteristics (independence, diligence, expertise and size) on audit and non-audit fees because of inherent dependence of the audit committee on the board as envisioned by the Companies Act, 2013. The results indicate that an independent board defined as the proportion of independent directors in the board positively affects the audit fee and there is no effect of the audit committee's characteristics on auditor fees. Even after controlling for audit committee's characteristics in the board of directors' model, an independent board and chairperson positively affect the auditor fees.