Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether or not auditor gender has an impact on the magnitude of corporate earnings management in small- and medium-sized private Finnish firms. Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines the association between auditor gender and...

This paper investigates whether there are differences in cosmetic earnings management between firms audited by male vs. female auditors in a sample of private Finnish firms. We find that earnings cosmetics is more likely to appear in firms audited by male auditors. Our results also indicate that...

This study investigates the interaction between audit quality and agency costs, when managerial ownership is used as a proxy for agency costs. The literature on audit quality suggests that firms with high agency costs are more likely to demand audit quality. Our database enables us to compare...