The paper uses cross country regression analysis on a data set consisting of one hundred thirty countries for the year 2008 to test whether better auditing standards lead to lower levels of corruption. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that improved auditing standards reduce corruption.

The primary argument of this paper is, namely, that the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), is in need of an enforcement mechanism. In drawing attention to this argument, the paper not only proposes considerations which are to be taken into account if such a mechanism is to be...

External auditors, both in the private and in the public sector, provide information to citizens and other stakeholders. The quality of this information – their auditing products – relies on ‘standards'. Audits are governed by accounting standards that largely concern ‘best practices'...

We study going-concern (GC) reporting in Belgium to examine the effects associated with a shift toward rules-based audit standards. Beginning in 2000, a major revision in Belgian GC audit standards took effect. Among its changes, auditors must ascertain whether their clients are in compliance...

Academics and practitioners agree there are substantial barriers to systematically transferring audit research knowledge to policymakers. We adopt a design science approach to investigate the efficacy of employing a research synthesis to transfer academic research knowledge to audit standard...

Auditing (accounting) researchers have published over 24,000 (75,000) academic articles (Google Scholar September 2016) using a variety of research methods since 1970. Yet accounting and auditing standard setters and regulators have frequently cited their inability to engage with and utilize...

Third party certification bodies audit companies to determine compliance with standards. We introduce a model of oligopoly competition between certification bodies, showing that a higher degree of certification body competition results in higher grades. We empirically test this hypothesis using...