We find that over six hundred auditors with fewer than 100 SEC clients exit the market following SOX. Compared to the non-exiting auditors, the exiting auditors are lower quality, where quality is gauged by: (1) avoidance of AICPA peer reviews and failure to comply with PCAOB rules, and (2)...

In their investigation of the new PCAOB Inspections, Lennox and Pittman [Lennox, C., Pittman, J., 2009. Auditing the auditors: evidence on the recent reforms to the external monitoring of the audit firms. Journal of Accounting and Economics, forthcoming] address one of the most important and...

This discussion makes several observations regarding the earnings quality research reviewed in Dechow, Ge and Schrand (2010) (DGS). I discuss some of the factors that led to the large growth in the earnings quality literature over the past two decades, and note a few of the important...