This paper empirically examine whether the way African banks use loan loss provisions to smooth earnings is influenced by capital market motivations and the type of auditor after controlling for non-discretionary determinants of loan loss provisions and fluctuations in the business cycle. The...

We examine the impact of PCAOB Auditing Standard No. 5 (“AS5”) and the economic recession on risk characteristics and degree of auditor/client misalignment in the publicly-traded client portfolios of Big 4 firms. AS5 and the economic recession both likely resulted in an increase in audit...

How do alternative job opportunities affect teacher quality? We provide the first causal evidence on this question by exploiting business cycle conditions at career start as a source of exogenous variation in the outside options of potential teachers. Unlike prior research, we directly assess...