The concept and notion of auditor independence has been of key importance to the audit profession, and to the variety of stakeholders who rely upon the work of auditors, for more than one hundred and fifty years. This contribution seeks to bring forward a number of the issues which underpin the...

Trust in the independence of auditors is essential for the functioning of markets. If auditors are not independent or not believed to be independent, transaction costs will rise. In November 2011, the European Commission proposed radical reforms for statutory audits in Europe, fueling heated...

Much has been written about Section 404 of the Sarbanes Oxley Act, especially the great expense that it inflicts upon SEC registrants preparing their annual reports. Less remarked on, though, is whether the restrictions that SOX imposes on the auditing profession in its relationship to its...

Auditors fulfill a crucial societal role by increasing the credibility of financial reports, which requires that appropriate audit quality be provided and auditors are factually independent and perceived as such. So far, regulators and researchers have focused on a few measures for improving...

Many legal jurisdictions, including the U.S. and U.K., have passed regulations to address the potential negative impacts of a lack of competition and high concentration in public company audit markets. One consequence of increased regulations, desired or not, is that they have presumably...

Using a game-theoretical model, we examine reasons and driving forces for audit firm split-ups, like the case of EY. In addition, we also analyze the potential consequences of audit firm split-ups on both the audit market and the audit quality. We find that the split-up decision is mainly driven...

This paper examines the 2017 audit inspection scandal involving KPMG — one of the fewbreaches of “tone at the top” at a Big 4 audit firm — to study whether and how the scandal affectsKPMG and its clients. From the federal court trial related to the scandal, we construct a novel dataset...