We investigate the relationship of audit fees, outside directors and firms’ ownership, marketing and asset structures as alternative (external versus internal) monitoring mechanisms that can be used to control incentive conflicts in costly contracting environments, by exploiting variation in ownership within the Australian and UK life insurance industries. In mutuals, ownership rights are not t...

Prior research has examined audit pricing for publicly held firms and provided some evidence of a Big 8 premium in pricing. We investigate audit pricing among private firms, and provide evidence that private firms do not pay such a premium on average. The relatively greater degree of dispersion in auditor choice (between Big 5 and non-Big 5 auditors) in our large sample of privately held audit ...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the structural pattern of the effect of corporate governance mechanisms (internal organization) on audit quality considering the role of the intermediary variable of behavioural components of auditors. The statistical population of this research is independent auditors and auditors working in audit firms. A sample of 395 people was selected by simple...

Using China’s stock market as the testing venue, this study examines how corporate transparency helps explain the sensitivity of stock prices to general investor sentiment. We find that firms with low corporate transparency, measured by a battery of proxies including state ownership, the prevalence of related party transactions, accrual-based earnings management, audit opinions, and the quality...

This study examines how lawsuits against auditors affect the audit pricing and client acceptance strategies of both the audit offices responsible for the failed audit and other audit offices of the same audit firm. We find that non-litigation offices of litigation audit firms decrease their fees following the filing of a lawsuit. However, audit offices involved in litigation increase their audi...

This study examines how human capital externalities affect audit markets in U.S. cities. A high level of human capital is predicted to improve the quality of labor in all audit firms, but a stronger effect is expected for the more “locally tied” non-Big 4 audit offices. Consistent with this, the quality of audited earnings improves as human capital increases, but the relation is stronger for no...

Audit firms face a constant conflict between the business of auditing and the profession of auditing, characterised in the literature as a cost-quality conflict. This conflict is manifested at trainee levels in the pressure to perform quality work within specified time limits. Prior studies have reported high levels of quality threatening behaviour (QTB) at trainee levels and the importance of ...

This study addresses the role of audit committees and auditors in the reporting of internal control deficiencies after the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). We find that a higher number of meetings of the audit committee, lesser proportion of ‘financial experts’ in the audit committee, and more auditor changes characterize firms that report weaknesses in their internal controls compared ...

Mandatory auditor rotation is designed to increase auditor independence. However, there already exist substantial regulations that ensure auditor independence, such as mandatory audit partner rotation, requiring auditor selection and supervision by audit committees consisting of independent directors, and limitations on the non-audit fees audit firms receive from the companies they audit. Many ...