This paper analyzes the impact of Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB)-type regulatory oversight on audit quality, audit value, and the audit market under different legal systems. Conventional wisdom suggests that regulatory oversight may be just a simple addition to a legal system...

We develop a measure to capture an audit firm's competitive position in a local audit market based on the transaction costs of changing audit firms included in DeAngelo's (1981) multi-period audit pricing model. Our competition measure reflects the size difference between the largest audit firm...

Conventional wisdom holds that joint audits would improve audit quality by enhancing audit evidence precision, because “Two heads are better than one,” and by enhancing auditor independence, because it is more expensive for a company to “bribe” two audit firms than one. Our paper...

The extant auditing literature documents an inconsistent relationship between audit fees and market concentration. In this paper, we argue that the impact of market concentration on audit fees is auditor and auditee specific. Based on the fact that the audit services to an auditee are generally...

The market for audit services has been the subject of extensive academic research since the 1970’s. The prevailing view is that audit markets are characterized by tiers of suppliers (Big 4 vs. non-Big 4, and industry specialists vs. non-specialists) where the upper-tier suppliers produce and...

This paper derives the impacts of legal system characteristics and auditing standards on auditor behavior (audit quality), and analyzes the determination of optimal auditing standards under different legal regimes. Legal regimes are characterized by differences in the uncertainty concerning the...

This paper develops a theory of the negotiating positions, or preferences over auditing standards, of the interest groups that may set such standards. Specifically, we consider how the preferences of auditors as standard setters may differ from the preferences of investors. We represent auditing...

This paper presents a model of auditor-client relationship-building. Existing literature suggests that quasi-rents rising from long auditor tenure have a negative effect on auditor independence. In contrast to this conventional wisdom, our paper shows a positive effect of quasi-rents resulting...