At the beginning of the 1990s UK accounting standards were described as a ‘laughing stock’. By the millennium they were widely acclaimed and in some respects world-leading. This paper explores some of the key technical advances in this period, and the political processes employed to secure...

The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the relations between audit outcomes and accounting standard design (principles-based vs. rules-based) for US firms. Considering that audit outcomes may vary with audit risk, which may differ under different accounting standards, we examine and...

We examine whether auditor regulatory oversight affects the value of financial statement audits. Using the PCAOB international inspection program as a setting to generate within country variation in regulatory oversight, we find that non-U.S. auditors inspected by the PCAOB gain 4 to 6% market...

This paper studies the impact of public audit oversight on financial reporting credibility. We analyze changes in market responses to earnings news after public audit oversight is introduced, exploiting that the regime onset depends on fiscal-year ends, auditors, and the roll-out of auditor...

This article comments on the Accounting and Auditing Law of the Republic of Georgia.The Georgian law “On Accounting and Auditing of Financial Reporting” was signed into law in 2012. Some of its provisions became effective immediately, while others became effective in January 1, 2013. The law...

We examine the audit pricing consequences of auditor inspections under the public oversight regime in the EU. Employing a staggered difference-in-differences design, we document an inspections audit fee premium during the post-inspection period when companies’ auditors are inspected by the...

We survey 170 inspectors, representing 27% of the inspection staff, from auditor public oversight boards (POBs) in 20 countries to understand whether, how, and why auditors respond to POB oversight. We find that a large majority of inspectors believe that auditors frequently respond to their...

Extant literature suggests that audit firms establish political connections at the national level to lobby regulators and legislators. In this paper we construct a novel dataset of Big 4 auditors’ political connections at the audit office level and examine the implications of auditors’...