Abstract: As a commonly used financing method for listed companies, while the controlling shareholder′s equity pledge alleviates the financing constraints of the company, it brings about problems such as short selling of large shareholders and excessive earnings management; whether the auditor can realize the risks under risk-oriented auditing and affect audit pricing is a question worth exploring. Starting with the relationship between equity pledge and audit pricing, this article analyzes the auditors′ judgment of corporate equity pledge risk from the perspective of external supervision, finding that the equity pledge will result in audit delay and increase in audit pricing, that is, the existence of equity pledge increases the risk of the company,so auditors reduce potential risks by increasing the level of effort and increasing the risk premium; this correlation is significant in the case of private enterprises, low degree of marketization, and low transparency of the company, and the effect is still significant after the use of the propensity score matching method. The above findings provide an insight from an external perspective for investors to evaluate the risk of controlling shareholder′s equity pledge, and it also has certain reference value for audit pricing.

Key words: equity pledge, audit delay, audit pricing, audit risk