We examine how auditors respond to news coverage of their firm and evaluate the extent to which national news outlets function as a watchdog over audit firms. We find that when media coverage includes issues specific to audit conduct (i.e., restatements, adverse internal control opinions, or...

Litigation poses a significant business risk for auditors. We argue that litigation events involving other auditors' deter audit firms from providing low quality audits. We find a significant subsequent decrease in the misstatement frequency of financial reports in within-industry audits...

Several reforms of the Sarbanes Oxley Act were designed to strengthen the vigilance exercised by audit committee members in their oversight of independent financial-statement audits of U.S. public companies. After SOX, a shift occurred in the audit committee labor market such that more...

A restatement occurs when a previously issued financial statement contains a misstatement and this misstatement is detected and corrected. Higher audit quality lowers restatement probability by reducing misstatements, but it increases restatement probability by increasing the probability that...

We examine the reputational impact of an audit office issuing internal control material weaknesses (ICMW). While prior research has examined how clients that receive an ICMW respond, we focus on clients that receive clean internal control opinions. We predict and find that audit offices that...

Using a measure of office-level industry concentration/specialization (as opposed to a market-based measure), we identify situations in which auditor industry specialization could be detrimental for audit outcomes. In stable environments, industry specialist auditors should be able to apply...

Litigation poses a significant business risk for auditors. We argue that auditors learn from other auditors' litigation events and examine the consequences of such events for future accounting misstatements. Using a hand-collected sample of auditor litigation events, we find a significant...