During the past decade, new regulations have been adopted to improve audit committee effectiveness. Prior research has generally provided evidence in support of these regulations and suggests that a more independent and expert audit committee is more effective. We posit that CEO power reduces or...

We explore whether the use of a high-reputation auditor mitigates horizontal agency costs of tax avoidance associated with ownership conflicts in private firms. Using a high-reputation auditor may impact tax avoidance as follows. First, the auditor's own reputation concerns limit client tax...

We examine the association between CEOs' political ideologies, proxied by CEOs' federal-level personal political contributions to the Republican Party relative to the Democratic Party, and audit fees of the firms that the CEOs manage. We hypothesize and find that firms run by CEOs whose...

We study whether managerial ownership and analyst coverage relate to audit fee. To the extent that these corporate governance factors relate to auditor assessment of the firm's agency costs and hence various risks the auditor must consider in the development of an audit program, they will affect...

This paper examines the effect of the lead independent directors who serve on audit committees on financial reporting quality and external audit firm interactions. Lead independent director is a position on companies' boards of directors that encompasses several responsibilities, including...

The study examines the association between CEO’s network connections and audit timeliness. Based on extant research, we hypothesize that well-connected CEOs are associated with reduced audit lag. Using a sample of over 2000 firms for the period 2004 to 2017, we find that, ceteris paribus,...

This study examines the impact of gender and ethnicity of CEO and audit committee directors on audit fees and audit delay in the U.S. firms. Audit related corporate governance literature has extensively examined the determinants of audit fees and audit delay by focusing on board characteristics,...

We investigate the audit fee response to CEO behavioral integrity (BI). BI refers to the perceived congruence between an individual's words and deeds (Simons 2002). Because low word-deed congruence should result in more explanations when communicating, we use variation in explanations beyond...

This study examines whether political connection to firms affects the association between audit committee independence and demand for higher quality audits. In line with Carcello et al. (2002), our findings show that there is a positive association between audit committee independence and audit...