This paper shows that politically connected non-Big 4/5 auditors are associated with lower levels of audit quality (proxied by the level of abnormal non-core earnings and the proportion of modified audit opinions) than firms with no political connections. We also show that more economically...

Prior studies suggest that auditors with short tenure are associated with lower earnings quality because of the lack of client-specific knowledge and/or low balling. In this study, we examine whether industry specialization of auditors and low balling affect the association between auditor...

Drawing on herding behavior theory, prior studies regarding the use of peers for investment decisions and compensation practices and the recent reports which suggest that firms use peer information for audit pricing, we examine the effect of peer groups on the audit pricing process of a sample...

While the global auditing services market is presently dominated by a group of four auditing firms (Big Four) namely Deloitte, Ernst & Young (EY), KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the auditing profession in Malaysia offers several exceptions in the audit of public-listed companies (PLCs)....

This study tests the hypothesis that the behavior and attitudes of Chinese and Western managers to budgetary participation will be different because of cultural differences. Chinese managers were used to represent managers from high collectivist, large power distance and long term orientation...

This study examines whether free cash flow (FCF) is associated with higher audit fees and whether levels of debt moderate this relationship. Low growth firms with high FCF are hypothesized to be associated with higher audit fees due to the agency problems associated with high FCF. Also,...