We introduce some new econometric tests and techniques for identifying and overcoming the problem of weak instruments in the context of joint provision of audit and non-audit fees. We use this context because identifying appropriate instruments is difficult due to the lack of theoretical...

In this paper, we examine whether the industry-specialist audit fee premium and scale discounts are attributable to financial statement complexity. Financial statement complexity is measured using a combination of the number of Arabic numerals, the number of words, and the readability of 10-K...

Using a comprehensive sample of audits for public companies in China, we demonstrate whether and how bad audit behavior spreads among individual auditors (i.e., CPAs). CPAs are deemed to be “diseased” during the period when their audits fail, and are subsequently sanctioned by the...

We identify connected auditors as those who attended the same university as the executives of their clients. Using manually collected data from China, we find that connected auditors are more likely to issue favorable audit opinions, especially for financially distressed clients. Moreover,...