This study investigates the empirical relationship between organized labor and audit fees. We find that audit fees are negatively related to the firm-level unionization rate — the higher the unionization rate, the lower the audit fees. We further observe that the unionized firms are less...

Using a sample of U.S. firms from 2003 to 2018, we examine the effect of an audit client’s code of ethics quality on audit fees. We find that clients with a lower code of ethics quality pay significantly higher audit fees, suggesting that auditors perceive such clients as riskier and charge...