Conventional wisdom holds that joint audits would improve audit quality by enhancing audit evidence precision, because “Two heads are better than one,” and by enhancing auditor independence, because it is more expensive for a company to “bribe” two audit firms than one. Our paper...

Building on an auction model, we examine the economic consequences of audit retendering, under which the incumbent auditor in auction possesses both an information advantage and knowledge advantage over outside auditors. Audit retendering allows the firm to retain the incumbent auditor with...