Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the effect that ownership structure (public vs private) has on the demand for high-quality auditors, specifically in the US banking industry. Design/methodology/approach: The authors predict that public banks are more likely to hire a high-quality auditor...

Prior literature has investigated three forms of earnings management: real earnings management (REM), accruals earnings management (AEM) and classification shifting. Managers make trade-off decisions among these methods based on the costs, constraints and timing of each strategy. This study...