财经问题研究

供应链关系在企业经营和高质量发展中的重要性日益凸显。注册会计师是企业财务信息的独立、专业鉴证者，经其审计的客户财务报告是供应商进行生产经营决策的关键信息之一。本文基于供应链视角，以2014—2022年中国沪深A股上市公司数据为样本，采用双向固定效应模型实证检验客户签字注册会计师行业专长对供应商全要素生产率的影响及其作用机制。研究结果显示：客户签字注册会计师行业专长能够提升供应商全要素生产率，该结论在经过内生性检验和稳健性检验后仍然成立；客户签字注册会计师行业专长通过提升供应商的运营效率、创新效率和资源配置效率提升供应商全要素生产率；客户签字注册会计师行业专长的供应链溢出效应发生在制造业供应商、供应商与客户地理距离远、供应商与客户合作关系稳定程度低、客户议价能力强的样本中。本文拓展了签字注册会计师行业专长的经济后果研究，补充了客户行为纵向传导方面的文献，为供应链企业加深互信合作、推动企业高质量发展提供了经验证据。

With the accelerating pace of economic development and the deepening of industrial specialization, supply chain relationships have gradually become a central determinant of corporate competitiveness and sustainable growth. However, information asymmetry between upstream and downstream entities, particularly the difficulty faced by upstream suppliers in accurately capturing downstream market information, has increasingly constrained their pursuit of high-quality development. External audits function as critical oversight mechanisms in capital markets. In this context, whether the professional competence of external audits generates beneficial spillovers in supply chain information transmission, enhancing the production efficiency of upstream enterprises, is an imperative research question worthy of scholarly exploration. Given that signing auditors are the primary executors and leaders of audit engagements, their individual industry expertise may exert distinct impacts on both clients and their supply chain partners. Notably, previous studies focus on the audit-firm level, largely neglecting to adequately recognize knowledge transfer barriers and service quality heterogeneity within auditing firms, especially lacking attention to the supply chain spillover effects of the individual industry expertise of signing auditors.Utilizing data from Chinese A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2014 to 2022, this paper empirically examines the impact and mechanism of the signing auditors' industry expertise on the total factor productivity(TFP) of supplier companies. The results demonstrate that clients' signing auditors' industry expertise significantly enhances suppliers' TFP. This finding remains valid even after alternative variable definitions, the exclusion of confounding factors, and the application of the Heckman two-stage regression to address potential sample selection bias. Mechanism analyses confirm that the industry expertise of clients' signing auditors promotes suppliers' TFP through improved operational efficiency, innovation efficiency, and resource allocation efficiency. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that these supply chain spillover effects concentrate when suppliers are manufacturing enterprises, upstream-downstream information asymmetry is higher, collaborative stability is lower, and clients possess stronger bargaining power.This paper's contributions are twofold. First, this paper shifts focus from the firm-level to the individual-level(signing auditors), pioneering the examination of their expertise externality in supply chain contexts. It also provides more precise evidence on how auditors' professional specialization generates positive externalities beyond the audited firm, thereby advancing high-quality auditing research. Second, grounded in vertical inter-firm theories, this paper uncovers how audit-induced externalities enhance supply chain coordination, enriching research on the vertical spillover of client behavior and providing empirical evidence for strengthening upstream and downstream collaboration and promoting high-quality enterprise development.