Adopting Huber's (2012) argument that forensic accounting has become a profession, this paper examines whether the forensic accounting profession and the forensic accounting certification industry should be regulated. Several recent studies have uncovered significant problems within the forensic...

A survey reveals that a significant number of forensic accountants believe it is important that corporations that issue certifications in forensic accounting be not-for-profit and that these corporations have a duty to disclose their legal status. However, there are for-profit forensic...

Auditors increasingly employ technologies to improve audit quality. Using a design science approach, we examine whether using drones and automated counting software can improve audit quality and thereby improve financial reporting. We assess three dimensions of audit quality—efficiency,...

This paper examines whether there is information sharing between mutual funds and their auditors about the auditors' other listed firm clients. Using data from the Chinese market, we find that mutual funds earn higher profits from trading in firms that share the same auditors. The effects are...

We experimentally examine whether audit seniors' use of simple cognitive processes for a complex task is affected by the strength of habits to use these processes that they developed as staff auditors. A habit is a mental association between a behavior and a specific context. We propose that,...

In an effort to provide more meaningful information to financial statement users, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) recently adopted sweeping changes to the audit report, requiring the audit firm to disclose whether or not it identified a critical audit matter (CAM) and its...

We analyze the disposition of auditor-proposed adjustments to financial statements. Our analysis addresses concerns, expressed by regulators and others, that auditors and their clients fixate on quantitative thresholds and overlook qualitative factors in assessing the materiality of discovered...

Providing auditors with credible incentives to exercise professional skepticism is a longstanding problem. We focus on costly skepticism: the common situation in which skepticism is ex ante appropriate based on available evidence, but generates incremental ex post costs and does not identify a...

We examine the effect of Big 4 auditors on management's use of optimistic language in audited financial statement disclosures. While regulators and practitioners consider the audit of disclosures to be increasingly important, empirical evidence of an auditor's effect on management's qualitative...

We investigate whether and how a “critical audit matter” (CAM) disclosure affects managers' real operating decisions in two contexts (issuing a loan that decreases versus increases the average risk profile of loan portfolios, or choosing to hedge versus speculate on commodity risk). We...