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...

The pricing of Big 4 industry leadership is examined for a sample of U.K. publicly-listed companies, and adds to the evidence from the Australian and U.S. audit markets that city-specific industry leadership commands a fee premium. There is a significant fee premium for city-specific industry...

We investigate if the SEC's mandated disclosure of fees for audit and nonaudit services affected the market's perception of auditor independence and earnings quality. Following the initial fee disclosures, we find that the market valuation of quarterly earnings surprises (earnings response...

We investigate if the SEC's mandated disclosure of fees for audit and nonaudit services affected the market's perception of auditor independence and earnings quality. Following the initial fee disclosures, we find that the market valuation of quarterly earnings surprises (earnings response...

Big 6 audit 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...

Two competing theories of initial engagement audit pricing are examined empirically. DeAngelo's (1981) model predicts initial engagement discounts in all settings, while Dye's (1991) model specifically predicts discounting will not occur in settings where audit fees are publicly disclosed....

The association of a country's investor protection regime with the quality of reported earnings is examined for a large sample of firms from 42 countries. Three attributes of earnings are evaluated: the magnitude of abnormal accruals, the likelihood of reporting losses, and earnings conservatism...

Accounting accruals are managers' subjective estimates of future outcomes and cannot, by definition, be objectively verified by auditors prior to occurrence. This causes audits of high-accrual firms to pose more uncertainty than audits of low-accrual firms because of potential estimation error...

Accounting accruals are based on subjective estimates and are therefore more uncertain and difficult to audit than many of the components of financial statements. One strategy auditors have to deal with the risk associated with this problem is to lower their threshold for issuing qualified audit...