Marie Laure Vandenhaute

Marie-Laure Vandenhaute

Associate Professor

Dr. Marie Laure Vandenhaute is an Associate Professor of Accounting and Auditing at the Solvay Business School, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). She teaches courses in accounting and auditing at both bachelor’s and master’s levels, using interactive and activating teaching strategies. Her research focuses on audit quality, auditor incentives, compensation structures within audit firms, auditor selection processes, and going-concern reporting. She has published in leading journals such as Accounting Horizons and European Accounting Review.Marie Laure has received recognition for her work, including a Best Paper Award at the EARNet Symposium and the Conférence Internationale de Gouvernance in 2019. She also serves as a reviewer for journals like European Accounting Review and International

The effect of mandatory fee disclosure on subsequent audit pricing and audit quality
This literature review synthesizes the current body of academic research on mandatory fee disclosure, with a focus on its effect on audit pricing and audit quality. While extant studies demonstrate that public fee disclosure has an impact on subsequent audit pricing, evidence on its impact on audit quality is inconclusive. Most research cited relies on archival data from listed firms in Asia and the US which leaves gaps in our understanding of the impact of mandatory fee disclosure in audit markets dominated by privately held firms. Private companies, however, constitute world-wide the majority of companies. Specifically, in continental European countries, such as the Dutch audit market, private companies make up over 99 percent of audited companies. Because private firms differ from listed firms on a number of important dimensions (e.g., exposure to market forces, nature of agency conflicts, information environment, it is ex ante unclear whether results from listed firms are generalizable to private firms. As part of the FAR Replication Program, our project aims to address this research gap: by replicating existing studies that investigate the impact of mandatory fee disclosure in the context of listed companies, our FAR replication project explores the actual consequences of the mandatory disclosure of fees on audit pricing and audit quality in the Dutch audit market, which is predominantly composed of private firms. To do so, we formulate several research questions that will be studied throughout our FAR replication project. Further, we elaborate on the methodology that we will employ and our anticipated contribution. Our review offers valuable insights for academics, regulators, and practitioners interested in the consequences of mandatory fee disclosure on audit pricing and quality. Specifically, our study contributes to the academic literature examining the real effects of disclosures. Regulators should be interested in our findings in case there are consequences, whether intended or unintended, to audit pricing and audit quality. With respect to practical implications, our study provides an analysis on the potential increased bargaining power after the regulatory implementation of mandatory fee disclosure.  
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The effect of mandatory fee disclosure on subsequent audit pricing and audit quality
In line with the EU Statutory Audit Directive (2006/43/EC), the Dutch legislation has required large companies to disclose audit and non-audit fees in their financial statements since 2008. The objective of this mandatory fee disclosure was to safeguard the independence of auditors and to ensure the quality of their audits. By making information about the level of fees and scope of work performed publicly available, stakeholders have a better understanding of the company-auditor relationship and, hence, are better able to assess whether auditor’s independence is impaired. However, practitioners and professional bodies have raised concerns that fee disclosure may also result in downward pressure on fees, as clients gain more bargaining power. This could potentially lead to a decrease in the quality of audit services as the auditor might no longer be able to perform sufficient and/or adequate audit procedures. Despite these concerns, there is only limited research available on the effects of mandatory fee disclosure. The limited research, moreover, mainly focuses on listed firms in Asia and the US. The effect of fee disclosure in European markets which are dominated by private firms, like the Netherlands, remains however largely unknown. As part of the FAR Replication Program, our project aims to address this research gap: by replicating existing studies that investigate the impact of mandatory fee disclosure in the context of listed companies, our FAR replication project explores the actual consequences of the mandatory disclosure of fees on audit pricing and audit quality in the Dutch audit market, which is predominantly composed of private firms. Our goal is to uncover the benefits as well as the potential drawbacks of mandatory fee disclosure.  
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Fostering Audit Quality through Social Learning from Errors
The findings of this project provide insights into how social learning from errors affects audit quality and how individual, relational, and organizational characteristics shape error learning. Together, these findings point to the following conclusions. It is not how often an auditor seeks help that improves audit quality; it is how valuable that help is. The findings show that seeking help frequently is, in itself, linked to lower audit quality. What matters is the learning value auditors derive from the help-seeking interactions they do have. Auditors who have access to a broader network of colleagues and gain more valuable learning from these interactions tend to achieve higher-quality outcomes. It is not the personality of the auditor that drives learning; it is who the auditor can turn to and the error management climate of the firm. Personality mainly shapes how many colleagues an auditor turns to, not how often they seek help or how valuable it is. What matters more is who they can turn to. The more accessible and psychologically safe a colleague is, the more auditors turn to them for help. Hierarchy especially drives the value of that help. Auditors learn most from hierarchically superior colleagues. While modest, the climate of the audit firm plays a role too. Help-seeking frequency remains largely the same regardless of whether the climate is open or blame-oriented, but an open error management climate especially improves how much auditors learn from the help they seek.
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Long-Term Audit Pricing Dynamics Under Mandatory Fee Disclosure: Evidence from an Exogenous Shock
This study examines the long-term evolution of audit pricing dynamics in a market characterized by continuous audit fee disclosure. Using data from the Dutch audit market over the period 2008-2019 and exploiting the 2014 EU Audit Reform as an exogenous fee shock, we analyze how audit fees adjust to prior-year mispricing. We find that audit fees exhibit mean-reverting behavior, with both overpricing and underpricing associated with subsequent fee adjustments. Further, results show that an exogenous fee-increasing shock temporarily increases fee dispersion. Under continuous fee disclosure, the availability of post-shock fee information facilitates pricing adjustments, with downward fee adjustments in the subsequent year. While bargaining power between auditors and clients is symmetric on average, clients exhibit stronger bargaining power in the one to two years following the fee-increasing shock. Taken together, our findings highlight the role of fee transparency in facilitating price adjustments and restoring pricing efficiency over time.
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