We test whether credit rating analysts consider managerial ability as a credit risk factor and find that higher-ability managers obtain more favorable credit ratings. Controlling for past performance, these results suggest that managerial ability is itself a significant credit rating factor....

While prior research has examined the relation between firm-level attributes and auditors' decisions, there is little empirical evidence on whether managerial attributes are informative to auditors. We examine the relation between managerial ability, i.e., ability in transforming corporate...

Very little is known about whether personal characteristics of senior managers convey information about audit risk. We focus on one characteristic of the CEO, the number of years the CEO has worked in the firm before becoming the CEO (CEO in-house experience). We posit that the CEO's in-house...