The main objectives of recent audit market regulations are to (1) increase audit quality, (2) decrease audit market concentration, and (3) foster competition between audit firms. However, the empirical evidence on whether such regulations fulfill these goals is limited. We construct a unique...

This paper investigates whether investors perceive high levels of auditor conservatism as excessive. Auditors can reduce their litigation risk by issuing going concern opinions to firms with relatively low default risk. However, this strategy is costly for investors. Investors cannot observe the...

While the accounting literature implies that increased discretionary accruals follow auditor changes, the underlying causal mechanism of this increase remains unclear. The potential reasons are the loss of the auditor's firm-specific knowledge or the firm's opportunistic choice of a new auditor....

Because mandatory audit firm rotation (MAR) limits the economic rents earned from a client, regulators regard MAR as a means to address the threat of impaired auditor independence. Moreover, regulators expect that MAR increases the dynamism of the audit market and decreases the market shares of...

Recently, a system of audit firm rotation has been implemented for the audits of listed companies conducted in the EU. In the US, in contrast, the regulator decided against such rotation. Whereas proponents argue that rotation would strengthen independence and decrease audit market...

This paper addresses the effects of a prohibition on providing non-audit services (NAS) to audit clients. By combining a strategic auditor-client game with a circular market-matching model that has an endogenous number of auditors, we take into account the interdependence between the auditors'...