This study documents a substantial impact of Big4 auditor choice on the sale proceeds of controlling interests of U.S. private firms. A representative private stock-purchase company with median enterprise value ranging from $14 to 18 million experiences a dollar value decrease in enterprise...

We exploit staggered state-level shocks to third-party auditor legal liability in the U.S. to test whether auditor litigation risk affects client companies' access to private debt markets. We find that an exogenous increase in auditor litigation risk leads to an increase in both clients'...

This study examines the relation between auditors and the unaudited Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A). We show that MD&As are more textually similar when firms share the same auditor. This result suggests that auditors influence MD&As to be more textually similar merely by reviewing the...

Exploiting the staggered state-level adoption of the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act (IBBEA), we examine whether and how banking deregulation affects firms’ auditor choices. We find that an exogenous increase in the degree of interstate branch banking deregulation...