The ultimate objective of financial reporting is to provide transparent financial statements and disclosures that meet the informational needs of investors and other users of financial statements. One of the primary goals of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (USHR 2002) is to provide more reliable...

Internal control over financial reporting (ICFR) audits have been the subject of intensive examination by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) and researchers, and the SEC has signaled ongoing interest in the monitoring of ICFR. However, the process through which auditors make...

The quality of financial statement (FS) audits integrated with audits of internal controls over financial reporting (ICFR) depends upon the quality of ICFR information used in, and its integration into, FS audits. Recent research and PCAOB inspections find auditors underreport existing ICFR...

Although researchers commonly acknowledge that public-company audits should add value by improving the precision of financial information via reduced estimation errors, prior literature correctly notes that there is little direct archival evidence to support this assertion. Moreover, regulatory...