In the past six years, the average number of industries (2-digit SIC) serviced by audit offices in the United States has grown by 20% and the number of industries where the office has specialization has fallen by 40% (Data Source: Audit Analytics). This suggests a trend away from specialization...

Using a set of unique databases from China, with employment history of auditors, details of audit engagement partners and financial reporting quality, we examine the performance of auditors that moved up to another higher-tier audit firm. We show that the audit quality of signing auditors with...

Both the GAO (2003, 2008) and the US Treasury (2008) have implied that the Big 4 dominated US audit market lacks competition. More recently, the PCAOB has expressed a somewhat different concern, i.e., that because audit committees may be primarily interested in negotiating a lower audit fee...

We examine why US-listed foreign companies choose to have a US-based (rather than home country-based) Big N firm as their principal auditor for SEC reporting purposes and the effects of that choice for audit fees and earnings quality. We find that the likelihood of the Big N principal auditor...

Following the findings from marketing and management literature on corporate reputation, we develop a new proxy to measure the audit office reputation and examine the impact of this measure on audit fees and audit quality. We argue that the presence of reputable clients and their tenure with the...

We examine whether the public disclosure of a client cyber-breach hurts the reputation of the local engagement office of the incumbent auditor. Prior research suggests that alleged client misconduct (even if unrelated to accounting) can hurt the auditor’s reputation and bargaining position...