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External auditor types and the cost stickiness of listed companies

External auditing is an important method of corporate governance that can effectively monitor and restrict a manager’s opportunistic behaviour and reduce cost stickiness. We focus on Chinese A-shares listed companies from 2002 to 2010 to explore the governance role of external auditors in cost stickiness. We classify audit firms into three types: the Big Four International, the Big Ten Domestic, and the non-Big Ten Domestic. The results show that the cost stickiness of firms audited by the Big Four International is significantly lower, while the cost stickiness difference between firms audited by the latter two types is not significant. Further tests show that the restriction on cost stickiness for the Big Four International is more significant when the largest shareholder’s shareholding ratio is lower or when the local market is less developed. These results indicate that the restriction placed by audit quality on cost stickiness varies with other corporate governance mechanisms. Our results are qualitatively unchanged under different robustness tests, including propensity score matching. This study shows that Big Four International audit firms can better reduce cost stickiness, which provides evidence of the higher audit quality of these firms and extends the study of restrictive factors on cost stickiness to external corporate governance mechanisms.