This paper studies the effect of audit market competition on the clients' cost of bank loans. Exploiting the demise of Arthur Andersen, which differently reduced the local audit market competition of metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), we find that auditor competition increases the cost of...

Signs of the gender gap are ubiquitous in society. Psychological theory suggests that when gender stereotypes are associated with competition, men exert greater effort against women (dominance effect) and women exert less effort against men (submissive effect), which implies that women are at a...