Effective February 05, 2001, publicly traded companies are required to
disclose audit and nonaudit fees paid to their external auditors. These fee data have
been used to test whether auditor independence is impaired when the external auditor
provides nonaudit services to a client, usually by examining whether certain earnings
characteristics are related to nonaudit fees in ways that suggest impairment. This paper
follows in that tradition by testing whether the earnings response coefficient (ERC), a
proxy for earnings quality, is associated with engagement profitability. Residual fees
derived from a two-stage regression model that prices audit and nonaudit services
simultaneously are used to proxy for engagement profitability.