An important aim of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was to reduce cost of capital by enhancing auditor independence. However, prior literature has argued that SOX has been ineffective in meeting this objective. We contribute to this debate by first providing evidence suggesting that auditor...

We provide evidence that distinguishes between competing production cost-based explanations of how to interpret unusually high (or low) audit fees and their expected relation with accounting quality. Abnormally high or low fees are typically proxied by the residuals obtained from fee models....