In family firms, the succession of controlling equity stake to next generation is an issue of paramount importance. This, however, can be a major challenge in the presence of heavy inheritance or gift tax burden (high tax rate and absence of tax-saving vehicles, such as trusts or foundations)...

We report on the current state and important older findings of empirical studies on corporate credit ratings and their relationship to ratings of other entities. Specifically, we consider the results of three lines of research: The correlation of credit ratings and corporate default, the...

Researchers in accounting, corporate finance, economics, and law regularly evaluate the impact of corporate governance provisions on firm performance and managerial actions. Many of these studies rely on publicly available governance summaries developed by the Investor Responsibility Research...

Motivated primarily by the claims that audit committee independence and accounting expertise and CEO compensation influence audit fees, this study examines the effect of such factors, on audit fees in two different institutional settings in the post-Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) era. The...

The purpose of this quantitative, correlational research was to examine to what extent the personnel factors of internal auditing departments predict the control environment within the public sector. Using the 2013 COSO Internal Control-Integrated Framework as the theoretical framework, we...

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...

We investigate the effects of audit partner rotation among U.S. publicly listed firms, utilizing the fact that audit partners are periodically copied by name in public correspondence between issuers and the SEC. Relative to non-rotation firms, we find no evidence of a change in the frequency of...

This paper examines the demand and supply side factors associated with audit partner selection and assignment in the United States. First, we examine whether audit partner gender and experience are associated with board and management gender and experience. Second, we investigate whether...

Increased audit regulation, coupled with practitioner reports of “hyper-acquisitive” behavior among smaller firms, creates a dynamic environment in which to assess changes in the U.S. audit market. Against this backdrop, we examine the consequences of small audit firm mergers on audit...

We propose a novel measure to discern a U.S. audit partner’s individual effect on audit quality: their houses. We argue that higher house value signals the partners with better performance and more incentives to provide high-quality audits. Using a hand-collected sample of all real estate...