The purpose of this paper is to analyze the market for audit services for publicly traded companies operating in the US for-profit (FP) healthcare sector. Complex national and local healthcare laws and regulations suggest the importance of assessing fee effects of joint national-level and city...

We investigate potential differences in audit reporting outcomes between Circular A-133 audits performed by governmental auditors vs. those performed by certified public accounting (CPA) firms. Specifically, we investigate the association between auditor type and the likelihood of...

Auditing as a corporate governance mechanism has attracted considerable research attention. Audit quality has come under increased scrutiny because of joint provision of audit and non-audit services (NAS). There are two competing hypothesis regarding the impact of NAS on financial reporting...

The Big 4 have acquired numerous consulting firms since the late 2000s, and regulators are concerned that a focus on consulting practices could negatively affect audit quality through audit firm culture. Audit firms counter by arguing that expertise gained through consulting can improve...

Economic literature documents that the rate of investment in intangibles has exceeded tangible assets in the U.S. private sector since the mid-1990s. However, whether or how the internally developed intangibles affect auditors' risk assessment and work has received little attention. This study...

This study investigates whether audit market competition influences the risk profile of audit offices' client portfolios and whether an audit office's client risk profile affects the association between audit market competition and audit quality. Economic theory suggests that market competition...

This study explores two potential safeguards against liability when auditors exercise professional skepticism, but do not detect a fraud: (1) a firm policy requiring a specific level of professional skepticism in high-risk audit areas and (2) providing jurors with key differences between the...

The majority of audit litigation research has focused on juror judgments. We examine how jurors' negligence judgments and attorneys' out-of-court settlements are differently impacted by two features of a materially misstated accounting estimate — the amount of estimate uncertainty and whether...

This paper examines how the relative timing affects the quality of financial reports in a staggered reporting system. We show that the audit quality of the leader firm exceeds that of the lagger. Investment efficiency also differs systematically across firms depending on the relative reporting...

Recent research challenges the notion that the Big 4 auditors provide a higher quality audit relative to non-Big 4 and suggests that the Big N effect could be due to self-selection. We contribute to this debate by controlling for pre-audit earnings quality, an important omitted variable in prior...