In China, submitting a claim for R&D tax deductions increases the likelihood that a firm will be scrutinized by the tax authorities. We argue that tax aggressive firms are keen to avoid the oversight of the tax authorities and so they are less likely to submit claims for R&D tax deductions...

Previous theories have argued that incorporation tends to reduce both audit quality and audit fees (Dye, 1994, 1995). In contrast, this paper shows that the theoretical effects of incorporation depend on three factors. If most clients are financially healthy (and pose little risk of litigation),...

Empirical results presented in this paper indicate that large auditors are more accurate than small auditors. DeAngelo (1981) has argued that large auditors have more incentive to maintain a reputation for accurate auditing because an audit failure may lead to a loss of rents due to auditor...

If a company's auditor believes that the company is likely to enter bankruptcy, the auditor is required to warn investors by giving a 'equalified' audit report. This paper investigates whether managers use auditor switching to prevent auditors from giving qualified reports ('opinion-shopping')....

Existing empirical research and results presented in this paper indicate that large auditors are more accurate than small auditors. Two explanations for this are examined. DeAngelo (1981) has argued that large auditors have a greater incentive to maintain a reputation for accurate auditing. More...

Prior research finds that women receive lower salaries than men. Similarly, we show that female audit partners in Belgium receive significantly lower compensation than male partners. However, there are alternative explanations for the pay gap other than gender discrimination. For example, the...

Many studies report that audit fees are discounted in the year of an auditor change and regulators have long been concerned that such fee discounting could impair audit quality. We find significant bias in the way studies have tested for fee discounting. The bias exists because interim...

A company officer is an "alumnus" if he previously worked for an audit firm. Iyer et al. (1997) find alumni have ties with their former audit firms and alumni are more inclined to provide economic benefits to former firms if they have stronger ties. If the alumnus is a senior corporate officer,...