Despite the emphasis on client business strategy as an underlying component of client
business risk in professional guidance, Hay, Knechel, and Wong’s 2006 meta-analysis of
audit fee models indicates that business strategy is not included as a determinant of audit
fees in any study since 1980.6 Rather, Hay et al. (2006) indicate that audit fee research
employs client risk proxies such as receivable and inventory ratios to capture inherent risk
(i.e., accounts more susceptible to material misstatement) and profitability and leverage measures to reflect “the extent to which the auditor may be exposed to loss in the event that a
client is not financially viable” (170).7 These and other proxies for client risk in the audit fee literature have produced mixed results (Cobbin 2002; Hay et al. 2006). Hay et al. (2006)
posit that commonly used proxies for client risk, such as profitability ratios, return on asset
(ROA) ratios, and loss, indicators provide mixed results because “auditors may not be as
finely calibrated to differences in the profitability metrics as the fee model suggests” (170)