高质量审计服务对于降低企业代理成本和提高资本市场配置效率的作用显而易见，审计产业本身则是按照市场机制来运作的。从产业组织理论的角度来看，审计产品作为会计师事务所供给行为（竞争行为）的最终结果必然受到其市场结构的深刻影响，而研究市场结构的意义便在于“使竞争行为的可能性与可测定的结构问题相联系”（Stigler，1968）。因此，研究审计市场结构，实质上是在探究其背后的市场竞争状况以及与之相关联的审计质量问题。
在西方学术界，有关审计市场结构的研究由来已久，最初是采用集中度指标来测算大型事务所的市场份额，后来逐渐扩展至考察其相对市场份额的稳定性、探究其规模优势、定价行为、声誉机制、行业专长等。但对中国而言，它们在很大程度上还是一块未经开垦的领域。另一方面，西方审计市场与中国审计市场存在巨大的差异，西方审计市场由超级大所主导，中国审计市场却一直呈现出分散化的态势，难有大型事务所脱颖而出。中国审计市场发展时间不长是一种解释，转轨经济的大背景可能也是造成这种差异的重要原因。上述两方面的原因使得对中国审计市场结构的探讨成为一个重要的研究主题，本论文的研究动机亦起源与此。
论文的研究思路是围绕着审计市场结构这条主线展开，旨在探讨审计市场结构的影响因素、有效性标准，考察中国的现状，并提出改进中国审计市场结构的对策和建议。按照这个思路，论文共分为8章。第1章交代论文的选题动机，界定论文涉及的关键概念和范围，回顾国内外的研究现状；第2章分析审计市场的特殊性，奠定论文的研究基础；第3章探讨审计市场结构的影响因素，并从审计市场结构最基本的4个构成要素出发分析其有效性标准。这4个要素分别是规模经济、集中度、进入壁垒和产品差异；第4、5、6、7章分别针对上述4个要素展开进一步的理论分析，并对中国审计市场进行实证考察；第8章对全文的研究结论进行综合运用，提出相应的对策和建议。
通过上述研究，本论文得出的主要结论如下：
1．审计市场结构的影响因素可分为4个层次，分别是国家产业政策导向、审计市场外部制度诱因、审计市场内部制度环境和事务所层面的因素；
2．审计市场结构的有效性标准可以从4个方面来探讨，分别是规模经济、集中度、进入壁垒和产品差异。有效的审计市场结构应该是一个可竞争的垄断均衡结构。具体来说，市场上有一批大型事务所，集中度较高，事务所之间的审计产品存在差异，但不存在人为的进入壁垒；
3．对中国审计市场的实证考察表明：（1）“四大”规模经济效应明显，主要体现在大客户市场上，本土事务所则规模不经济；（2）集中度的变化轨迹是一条U形曲线。2000年以前，集中度逐年下降；2000年以后，集中度快速提高，但仍然远低于成熟审计市场的水平；（3）市场条块分割严重，阻碍事务所流动的主要是制度性壁垒和地域性壁垒，但地域性壁垒正在逐渐被打破；（4）“四大”具有高质量的声誉，本土事务所则不然；而不管是哪一类事务所，均不具有行业专长。总之，按照审计市场结构的有效性标准，中国审计市场尚存在很大差距。这恰恰反映出了中国审计市场目前的竞争秩序混乱、市场效率低下。
与现有审计研究文献不同的是，本论文从产业组织的视角对审计市场的结构变量进行系统分析并对中国审计市场展开实证考察。这一颇具新意的研究视角，不仅丰富我们对审计市场的认识，也使得本论文具有一些学术上的创新意义，主要表现在：
1．将审计市场上的众多问题纳入到统一的市场结构分析框架，并对这些问题的内在联系进行了探讨。这些研究领域算不上是全新的，但研究的系统性相信有助于弥补一些局部研究成果的不足；
2．产业组织的研究大多针对产品市场，审计行业则是一个特殊的服务市场，例如，信息不对称、间接委托模式、审计悖论、购买审计意见、低价揽客以及对事务所营销的限制等。审计市场这些独一无二的特征使得该项研究不仅仅是借鉴产业组织理论的相关原理，它本身也会对产业组织的研究做出独有的贡献。
关键词：审计市场结构，规模经济，集中度，进入壁垒，产品差异
Abstract
It is obvious that high quality audit service plays an important role in reducing enterprise’s agency cost and improving the allocation efficiency of capital market. The audit industry has been always operated on the basis of market mechanism. From the angle of industrial organization theory, audit market structure has a significant effect on the audit service which is the outcome of CPA firms’ supply behavior. The meaning of researching market structure lies in that it will become possible to link the possibility of competitive behavior with the measurable market structure (Stigler, 1968). Therefore, the purpose of research audit market structure is to explore competitive status and audit quality in nature.
In the west academic world, the research of audit market structure has a long history. For these problems, initial research measured big firms’ market share with CRn. Subsequently it gradually expanded to seeking about the stability of big firms’ relative market share, probing into the advantage of scale economy, audit pricing, reputation mechanism, industry expertise, and so on. However, it is a comparative new field in china .On the other hand, there is a big difference between west audit market and Chinese audit market. The west audit market is dominated by super big firms, but the Chinese audit market is always spread around and has no big firms. One of the reasons is that the development time of Chinese audit market is not very long and the other may be the background of transition economy. For the above reasons, the discussion of Chinese audit market structure becomes an important research topic, which is exactly the original intention of this paper.
This paper focuses on the audit market structure and takes it as the core of researches. It aims at discussing the influence factors and validity criterion of audit market structure, seeking about Chinese audit market structure, and putting forward some proposals of improving Chinese audit market structure. According to this route, this paper consists of 8 chapters. Chapter 1 accounts for the reasons of writing this paper, defines the key concepts and scope and reviews the domestic and foreign research literature. Chapter 2 analyses the particularity of audit market and establishes the base of research. Chapter 3 discusses the factors of influencing the audit market structure, and analyses the validity criterion of audit market structure from four basic aspects. These aspects are scale economy, concentration, entry barrier and product differentiation. Chapter 4, 5, 6, 7 respectively makes a further theoretical analysis according to the above four aspects and performs empirical analysis of Chinese audit market structure. Chapter 8 puts forward some proposals.
Through the above research, this paper obtains the following main results:
1. The factors of influencing the audit market structure include four levels: industry policy, exterior system of audit market, interior surroundings of audit market and factors of CPA firms.
2. The validity criterion of audit market structure can be discussed from four aspects: scale economy, concentration, entry barrier and product differentiation. The effective structure of audit market should be a contestable monopoly equilibrium structure. It is necessary that there should be some big firms in the market whose concentration should be high, and there exist some differences among the audit products but no man-made entry barrier.
3．The empirical research on Chinese audit market shows: (1)“big 4” shows obvious effects of scale economy in the large market segment, but native firms show scale diseconomy. (2) The track of concentration is a curve of U. The concentration declines year by year before 2000; the concentration increases rapidly after 2000, but it is still under the lever of mature audit market. (3)The market is divided up bar and block, the main factors that hampers the flow of firms are regulation barrier and regional barrier, but regional barrier is being broken gradually. (4)“big 4” has reputation of high quality, but native firms has no reputation. We fail to find out the evidence of industrial expertise of both “big 4” and native firms.In a word, there is a great gap between the Chinese audit market structure and the effective audit market structure. It just reflects the confusion of competition and lowness of efficiency in Chinese audit market.
Compared with existing audit research literature, the paper performs a systematic analysis of the elements of audit market from the angle of industrial organization, and makes an empirical research on the Chinese audit market. It is exactly a different research angle that not only contributes to supplementing the current understanding of audit market, but also endows the paper with academic innovations. The innovations include:
1. The research incorporates the problems of audit market into a uniform framework of market structure and discusses the inherent relationship of these problems. These research fields may be not new, but this systematic analysis can make up the deficiency of current researches.
2. The research of industrial organization mostly focuses on the market of product. But audit industry is a unique service market and owns such characteristics as information asymmetry, indirect engage model, audit paradox, opinion shopping, lowballing and restricting marketing. Because of these unique characteristics of audit market, this research not only uses the theory of industrial organization for reference, but also contributes to the research of industrial organization.
Key words:audit market structure, scale economy, concentration, entry barrier, product differentiation
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