Governance regulatory changes, IFRS adoption, and New Zealand audit and non-audit fees: Empirical evidence

Abstract

This study examines the association between overseas and New Zealand governance regulatory reforms in New Zealand public companies’ audit and non-audit fees. We state audit and non-audit fee models, and use temporal and IFRS indicator variables to relate the timing of the fee changes with the incidence of the overseas and local governance reforms. We find that audit fees increased in New Zealand over 2002-2006. Such increases associate reliably with the transition to and adoption of NZ IFRS and not with the overseas governance reforms in the United States and Australia, enacted earlier. Our results also show a decrease in non-audit fees over the same period but we find no IFRS effect for non-audit fees. JEL Classification: C30, K22, L80, M40, M41.