Abstract: Based on the textual information of“management discussion and analysis”in the annual reports of 6909 A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2012 to 2017, this paper calculates the cosine similarity among the clients in the same industry at the same year in the same audit firm. Then it takes the cosine similarity as the proxy variable of auditor-client compatibility to analyze the impact of auditor-client compatibility on audit fees and audit quality. The findings show that auditor-client compatibility is positively correlated with audit fees and audit quality; and auditor-client compatibility of domestic 10 major firms is also positively correlated with audit fees and audit quality. The conclusion of the study provides a path for China’s domestic accounting firms to become “stronger” by improving the auditor-client compatibility.

Key words: auditor-client compatibility; text similarity; audit fees; audit quality