Big 6 market shares based on aggregate national data have been used in prior research to infer market leadership and industry expertise, and to differentiate Big 6 accounting firms from one another. In this study it is demonstrated that further differences exist with respect to city-specific...

We investigate if timely loss recognition is associated with acquisition-investment decisions. Using a Basu (1997) piece-wise linear regression model, we find that firms with more timely incorporation of economic losses into earnings make more profitable acquisitions, measured by the bidder's...

Francis and Yu (2009) and Choi, Kim, Kim, and Zang (2010) report evidence that Big 4 audits are of higher quality when the engagement office is of larger size: specifically, client earnings quality is higher and auditors in larger offices are more likely to issue going concern audit reports. We...

This study investigates whether differences in accounting standards across countries inhibit firms from investing in foreign markets. Using the frequency and dollar magnitude of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A) from 32 countries over the period 1998-2004, we find that the volume of...

We investigate if the existence of low-quality audits in an audit office indicates the presence of a contagion effect on the quality of other (concurrent) audits conducted by the office. A low-quality audit is defined as the presence of one or more clients with overstated earnings that were...

Audit regulators around the world have expressed concern over market dominance by Big 4 accounting firms and the potential adverse effect it may have on the quality of audited financial statements. We use cross-country variation in the audit market structure of 42 countries to examine two...

The term “audit style” is used to characterize the unique set of internal working rules of each Big 4 audit firm for the implementation of auditing standards, and the enforcement of GAAP within their clienteles. Audit style implies that two companies audited by the same Big 4 auditor,...

We investigate if timely loss recognition is associated with acquisition-investment decisions. Using a Basu (1997) piece-wise linear regression model, we find that firms with more timely incorporation of economic losses into earnings make more profitable acquisitions, measured by the bidder's...

This paper examines whether a country's corporate transparency environment, which includes the quality of accounting information, contributes to efficient resource allocation. Based on a cross-country study of 37 manufacturing industries in 37 countries, we provide three pieces of related...