In the past six years, the average number of industries (2-digit SIC) serviced by audit offices in the United States has grown by 20% and the number of industries where the office has specialization has fallen by 40% (Data Source: Audit Analytics). This suggests a trend away from specialization...

This paper investigates whether the provision of non-audit services (NAS) to audit clients impairs auditor independence of mind and independence in appearance. The main contributions of this paper are in terms of its timeliness with respect to regulatory changes, the simultaneous examination of...

Consulting service lines have again become a focus for the Big 4 accounting firms. Since SOX prohibits the provision of many types of non-audit services to audit clients, this means firms and many of their clients must likely choose between an audit and a consulting relationship. We use a...

In an effort to make audit reports more informative to investors, the U.K. recently passed a new audit reporting standard that requires auditors to disclose the risks of material misstatement (RMMs) that had the greatest effect on the financial statement audit. Using short-window market...

Recent proposals on audit regulation, whether in the EU or by the PCAOB, have been motivated by efforts to increase audit quality. However, there does not exist any generally agreed upon definition of audit quality. This paper aims to critically assess the status quo of the discussion regarding...

In this paper, we document 45 specific allegations related to audit deficiencies based on GAAS, as detailed in 141 AAERs and 153 securities class action lawsuits over the violation years 1978–2016. Next, we use these allegations to validate existing popular proxies of audit quality. Of all the...

This study examines the role of the local auditor office in the comparability and quality of their clients' earnings. I construct of sample of firm-pairs in which each observation consists of two firms in the same industry-year. Accounting comparability is inferred by the closeness of total...

To understand the implications of decentralized ledger technology for financial reporting and auditing, we analyze auditor competition, audit quality, client misstatements, and regulatory policy all in a unified framework. We demonstrate how collaborative auditing using a federated blockchain...

I investigate how financial audit regulation in the charitable sector affects donor behavior. I propose that audit mandates alleviate the moral-hazard concerns of small and dispersed donors dealing at arm's length. My empirical strategy relies on variation in size-based exemption thresholds...

In this paper, we examine the association between the contents of the expanded audit report, which was adopted in 2013, and insider trading in the United Kingdom. Pre/post analyses indicate that following adoption of the expanded report, the likelihood and volume of insider trading in the period...