Audits by private, third-party auditors are frequently mandated to ensure compliance with regulations (e.g., accounting or environmental standards). We examine how such mandates shape the market for audits. In our empirical examination, we focus on one of the oldest and most prominent audit...

Dieses Arbeitspapier gibt einen Überblick über aktuelle Normen und Standards, die für das Projektmanagement (PM) von Bedeutung sind. Als relevante Normungsorganisationen werden die International Organization for Standardization (ISO), das Deutsche Institut für Normung (DIN) und das...

We investigate the strategic decision making of audit firms in a tendering process. In particular, we are interested in how audit firms behave to acquire audit clients and which audit quality is ensured. Our main findings are manifold. First, if two big audit firms are competing, we do not...

When two or more agents compete for a bonus and the agents' productivity in each of several possible occurrences depends stochastically on (constant) effort, the number of times that are checked to assign the bonus affects the level of un-certainty in the selection process. Uncertainty, in turn,...

As firms implement tournament bonus reward schemes, mainly the idea is to introduce competition amongst their agents in the order to promote their performance. Tournaments in which agents compete for a bonus by investing effort, are frequently applied, e.g., in development races, political...

We study regulation of the auditing profession in a model where audit quality is unobservable and enforcing regulation is costly. The optimal audit standard falls short of the first-best audit quality, and is increasing in the riskiness of firms and in the amount of funding they seek. The model...

The paper examines whether international regulatory harmonization increases cross-border labor migration. To study this question, we analyze European Union (EU) initiatives that harmonized accounting and auditing standards. Regulatory harmonization should reduce economic mobility barriers,...

Das Bestehen am Markt wurde in der Vergangenheit zunehmend in Abhängigkeit vom Wachstum durch Unternehmenszusammenschlüsse im weitesten Sinne gesehen. Selbst wenn Größe als das Ergebnis der Zusammenschlüsse als solche nicht mehr das Ziel ist, wird das Nutzen von Synergieeffekten zur...

Timing of Disclosure for Financial Statements in Germany after the 2007 EHUG Act: The paper analyses the timing of disclosing financial statements for small and medium enterprises (SME) in Germany in 2007 and 2008. Comparisons of different regional areas and different company sizes are made and...

This paper explores approaches to measure the performance of the internal audit function. Based upon three proposed dimensions of formal internal audit performance - material performance, cost and risk - it uses competence research methodology to characterize and structure internal audit...