The majority of audit fee research has identified that BIG-N audit firms charge higher fees than other auditors. To detect the reasons for such a fee premium in a concentrated audit market it is necessary to compare audit pricing in the concentrated market to pricing behavior in a competitive...

Managers of multinational companies often favour an aggressive tax avoidance strategy that pushes the legal limits onto the advantage of shareholders and the disadvantage of the spirit of democratically legitimized tax laws. The public and media debate whether such aggressive behaviour is...

The evolution of large international audit firms was driven by client needs and legal regulations specific for the audit industry. The organizational structure of these professional service firms can be characterized as a specific form of a strategic network. The national member firms have to...

Everybody who ascribes a material steering function to moral norms has to give some reasons why rational individuals actually obey these norms. This is a quite natural question to start with, specially for economists. Recently, the philosophers Stemmer (2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004), Hoerster...

The publishing conduct of scientists is increasingly becoming the object of science-based ethical considerations. Studies have shown that questionable publishing conduct is not a rare phenomenon in this area. National and international scientific organisations are making recommendations about...

Since the public has vehemently debated financial scandals like Enron or WorldCom numerous articles asked for ethical responsibility from auditors. The financial scandals were also seen as ethical scandals. A Code of Ethics with moral content could be a potential remedy but the crucial question...

This paper examines professional associations’ local responses to global demands of audit standardization. Our longitudinal study from 1998 to 2018 analyses how professional associations of the German audit profession engaged in an intense framing contest over the adoption of external quality...

Managers of multinational companies often favor an aggressive tax avoidance strategy that pushes the legal limits onto the advantage of shareholders and the disadvantage of the spirit of democratically legitimized tax laws. The public and media debate whether such aggressive behavior is immoral....