Political connections, legal liability and auditor behaviours: evidence from China

External auditing provides reasonable assurance to accounting information quality and alleviates the agency problem in corporations. In China, after the re-establishment of the external auditing profession in the 1980s, the auditing profession developed significantly and came to play an important role in the capital market. However, the institutional mechanisms are still relatively weak and underdeveloped in China, Therefore, this thesis is concerned about whether and how legal liability and political connections can influence auditor behaviour in the Chinese setting.