European Union adopted the Regulation (EU) No 537/2014, which in practice prohibits the joint provision of audit and most types of non-audit services (NAS). Regulators presume that NAS fees weaken auditor independence and, as a result, impair audit quality. As the evidence at the European level...

This paper investigates whether foreign ownership affects audit fees by analyzing share-holdings of listed firms from Western European countries. The results show that foreign ownership is an important factor that drives the demand for audit services. However, the willingness to pay higher audit...