Focusing on the merger of Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand in 1998, we document increased audit quality (measured … by earnings quality of the clients) for the merged firm and other big-X auditors 1 during the post-merger period because … and 2) the value relevance of earnings has significantly increased. Furthermore, we find evidence that in the post-merger …

competition. More recently, the PCAOB has expressed a somewhat different concern, i.e., that because audit committees may be … competition in the US audit market could pressure the incumbent auditor to compromise on audit quality (Doty 2011). We utilize the … notion of counterfactual fees chargeable by auditors to assess fee competition and investigate competing views on the …

an adverse impact on competition and audit quality. We examine the impact of increasing competition on audit pricing and … audit quality in an emerging market where regulatory policies have resulted in increased competition (less market … competition in audit markets in developing economies generate audit fee pressure, which negatively affects audit quality. We …