The main objectives of recent audit market regulations are to (1) increase audit quality, (2) decrease audit market concentration, and (3) foster competition between audit firms. However, the empirical evidence on whether such regulations fulfill these goals is limited. We construct a unique...

We examine the association between country-level government quality and firms' choice of external auditors. We use a firm's choice of a Big 4 auditor as a proxy for the demand for high-quality financial reporting. Using a cross-sectional sample of 142,193 firm-year observations from 46 countries...

We examine the association between country-level government quality and firms' choice of external auditors. Using a cross-sectional sample of 142,193 firm-year observations from 46 countries over 1998-2007, we show that the government quality of a country has a significant positive effect on the...

Using an international sample of firms from 31 countries, we study the relation between auditor quality and corporate tax aggressiveness. Using an indicator variable for tax aggressiveness when the firm's corporate tax avoidance measure is within the top quintile of each country-industry...

In 2011, the largest banks were designated as Global Systemically Important Banks (GSIBs) by the Financial Stability Board. While these banks face closer supervision and additional constraints, they also benefit from an implicit guarantee from their governments. The changed environment for these...

We examine the association between country-level government quality and firms' choice of external auditors. We use a firm's choice of a Big 4 auditor as a proxy for the demand for high-quality financial reporting. Using a cross-sectional sample of 142,193 firm-year observations from 46 countries...

We investigate whether, and how, auditors price risks related to greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) for a sample of firms traded in the US that disclose their CO2 emissions data. Specifically, we assess whether auditors price CO2 physical and transition risks among multiple categories of emission...

Although researchers commonly acknowledge that public-company audits should add value by improving the precision of financial information via reduced estimation errors, prior literature correctly notes that there is little direct archival evidence to support this assertion. Moreover, regulatory...

We provide the first, large sample evidence on firms’ voluntary, third-party verification of environmental and social metrics in ESG reports (“ESG assurance”) in the United States. Focusing on S&P 500 firms from 2010-2020, we document a striking increase in ESG assurance. Unlike financial...

We investigate the impact of the initiations of national audit inspection programs on firm-specific stock crash risk in 38 countries worldwide. The staggered commencement of the inspection regimes in different countries allows us to identify the causal effect of audit quality on crash risk. We...