After having forbidden companies to provide financial forecasts until 1973, the SEC now encourages them to do so because of the relevance of prognosis for investors. As forecasts are inherently uncertain, there is always the risk for the companies to be suit when predictions fail. Therefore the...

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has transformed the institutional environment in the US by making the audit committee responsible for the appointment, compensation and oversight of the auditor. We examine whether this institutional change successfully resolves the alleged problem of an...

Currently, there is an international trend to strengthen independence requirements for auditors. Whether the new rules can be explained from an economic viewpoint is discussed in the first part of the paper. Thereby the conclusion is reached that because of reputation effects, big audit...

In psychological and economic experiments, systematic deviations from rationality - so-called biases - have been observed. Such biases were also researched extensively in the auditing research in the US. The goal of this paper is to give an overview of this research and to show possible research...