We examine auditor choice for listed companies in France where two (joint) auditors are required by law. The joint audit requirement creates a unique setting to study if a firm’s ownership structure affects its auditor-pair choice as well the consequences on earning quality. The results...

We examine auditor choice for listed companies in France where two (joint) auditors are required by law. The joint audit requirement creates a unique setting to study if a firm’s ownership structure affects its auditor-pair choice as well the consequences on earning quality. The results...

What is the need for and value of private company audits? This is an important question since countries differ as to whether they have audit requirements for private companies, even when they have financial reporting requirements for such firms. There are also disagreements as to whether audit...

One of the key reforms aimed at improving audit quality has been the introduction of public oversight over the auditing profession by national public oversight bodies (POBs). The foundation of their strategy is inspections of audit firms. However, little is known about the impact of inspections...

Auditing standards emphasize that fraud detection is an important objective of an audit and require the exercise of professional skepticism (PS) and a discussion among the engagement team to prevent and detect fraud. The purpose of this study is to examine whether professional skepticism is a...

As a result of legal and regulatory requirements, audit firms in certain jurisdictions have recently started issuing transparency reports containing information on audit firm governance. In this study we investigate whether audit firm governance disclosure is associated with actual audit...

We integrate existing conceptual models of auditors’ professional skepticism with the Theory of Planned Behavior to develop an empirically testable model that explains the processes underlying the association between trait skepticism and skeptical actions. We use data from a sample of 663...

We study what determines the involvement of component auditors in multinational enterprise (MNE) group audits and the association with audit quality and audit fees. Using unique Australian disclosures of group audit fees paid to the principal and component auditors, we first document that MNE...

Today’s business world calls for leaders, and the auditing profession is no exception. Informed by emerging research on individual auditors, we investigate whether and how leadership ability, an attribute the auditing profession strongly emphasizes, is rewarded by the audit labor market. Using...