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अमूर्त

The Determinants of Audit Fees: Evidence from Private Banks in Ethiopia

Workneh Dilie*

The main objective of this study was to investigate factors determining audit fees in Ethiopian private banks, with specific emphasis on how the client size, client profitability, client complexity, audit risk, audit firm size, audit tenure and audit report lag impact on audit fee. This was informed by the fact that most research on audit fee models has been done in developed countries while little study is available in developing countries like Ethiopia. The study was based on a sample of 10 private banks covering a time period of nine years from 2009 to 2017 (90 observations). The data employed in this study was secondary data from annual reports of the banks. Panel data regression analysis based on fixed effects model was used in the analysis of the variables in this study. The panel fixed effects regression result’s coefficient of determination (R2) was 0.6349 implying that 63.49% of the variation in audit fees is explained by the variables in the study, while 36.51% of the audit fee variance is explained by the error term. The results of the study indicated that the amount of audit fees is significantly influenced by client size, client complexity, and audit tenure. However, this research revealed that there was no significant relationship between audit fee and client profitability, audit firm size, audit risk and audit report lag.