Using a large sample of privately held Korean companies that are not required to obtain an external audit, this paper examines the value of voluntary external audits of financial statements with respect to the cost of debt. We find that private companies with an external audit pay a...

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...

We use the release by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board on May 18, 2010 showing its oversight of certain foreign auditors has been denied as a natural experiment to examine investors’ early valuation of the PCAOB’s international audit oversight on U.S. listed foreign companies....