This study examines the effect of individual auditor quality (below the partner level) on overall audit quality. We aggregate audit employee-level performance evaluations to create a measure of auditor quality at the office level. We find that high quality audit offices are associated with a...

This study examines the relevance of modified audit opinions (MAO) in private debt contracting. We use the auditor's explanatory language to partition MAOs into Inconsistency opinions, resulting from an accounting change or a restatement; and Inadequacy opinions, arising from a material...

Analyzing a large sample of non-U.S. public firms from 31 countries that obtain private loans, we find that loan syndicates that lend to borrowers that employ Big N auditors are larger and less concentrated and that the lead arrangers and largest investors of these syndicates are able to hold a...

We investigate the effect of audit partner style on financial statement comparability in a U.S. setting using newly-available data from 2016 to 2020. We document an audit partner style effect on comparability incremental to audit firm and audit office effects. Our results are consistent across...

The financial instability stemming from large volumes of simultaneous selling in the corporate bond market has been a topic of concern in recent years. Investors in this market care primarily about the downside risk of a firm given their concave payoff function, and this is precisely the...