Accountability has its roots in accounting as both words' etymology traces to the Latin word “accomptare” (to account). Financial accounting, as the field came to be known, has at its heart the rendering of an account of the financial affairs of an organization to interested parties who may...

We examined the change in audit fees after adoption of GASB 34 for a sample of 350 cities, correcting for audit fee inflation unrelated to GASB 34. We found that the mean (median) fee change for 2002 adopters was 4.9 (2.9) percentage points higher than for non-adopters. The mean (median) fee...

This study investigates why auditors leave public accounting and the consequences of auditor departures. We find that audit competency is negatively associated with a departure decision. Specifically, audit partners and managers, as well as auditors generating more audit revenues and providing...

Ten years after the Securities and Exchange Commission mandated the conversion of corporate financial statements to machine-readable formats, there is still no analogous mandate for state and local government Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs). We explore the challenges and benefits...

Many profession-changing events have occurred in the 25 years since Sikka, Willmott, and Lowe (1989) published Guardians of Knowledge and Public Interest, among them the collapse of Enron and other international corporate frauds and failures along with the demise of Arthur Anderson; the creation...

This paper considers the legal liability regime for financial advisors, namely certified public accountants and auditors, in Singapore and Australia. Examination of the comparative aspects in which lawsuits against financial advisors are commenced provided an analysis of the legal and commercial...

The objective of our paper is to obtain a better understanding of how auditors anticipate the potential for PCAOB inspection, experience the inspection, cope with the consequences of the inspection, and understand the PCAOB's influence within the context of professionalism. We use a qualitative...

Computer Assisted Audit Tools and Techniques (CAATTs) are not new for auditors, and it needs to be adopted to gain the audit efficiency and effectiveness especially in a current era of technology. This paper examined the implementation of CAATTs by internal auditors in the public sector....