We examine whether additional education requirements to enter the accounting profession lead to higher costs to clients. Using the 150-hour education requirement in the U.S. and the audit services market during the period 2000-2004 as the setting for our study, we find that corporations...

Ineffective internal controls over financial reporting often relates to a lack of qualified personnel with sufficient accounting and technical expertise. In this study, we examine whether firms respond to internal control failures by increasing their demand for specific accounting and finance...

Two critical aspects of the model of auditor expertise development in Tan and Libby [1997] are that audit firms do not value tacit knowledge in inexperienced auditors but do value it in experienced auditors. We update the former and extend the latter. Our paper predicts and finds that audit...

This study examines the impact of auditor quality on debt covenants. We conjecture that high-quality auditors have two related effects on debt covenants: (i) they encourage fewer and less restrictive covenants by providing assurance to lenders at contract inception and, consequently, (ii) they...

Today’s business world calls for leaders, and the auditing profession is no exception. Informed by emerging research on individual auditors, we investigate whether and how leadership ability, an attribute the auditing profession strongly emphasizes, is rewarded by the audit labor market. Using...

Conventional wisdom suggests that partner identification disclosure can improve audit quality, because it may enhance transparency and individual accountability. Building on a two-period assignment model, we show that under certain conditions, the disclosure can distort partner client assignment...

Two critical aspects of Tan and Libby [1997]’s model of auditor expertise development are that audit firms do not value tacit knowledge in inexperienced auditors but do value it in experienced auditors. We update the former and extend the latter. Our paper predicts and finds that audit firms...

Limited availability of human capital data on the internal audit function (IAF) has constrained research on this topic. This study overcomes certain data limitations by using LinkedIn data from Revelio Labs. Using longitudinal data on individual IAF employees, we document that IAF experience,...

This study examines the qualifications and criteria required of public auditors to facilitate effective and objective auditing results. A questionnaire was developed and distributed to a representative sample of chief control departments in the Jordan Audit Bureau (AB) and financial managers and...

Measures of occupation distance based on underlying skill portfolios are constructed and used to contrast involuntary and total mobility. One component of total occupational mobility is voluntary mobility, including moves to higher job offers using the same skills, as well as promotions that may...