Recently, the Commission of the European Communities has put up for discussion various reform proposals intended to enhance the reliability of audits and to re-establish trust in the financial market. In particular, the EU Commission seeks to strengthen auditor independence and to decrease the...

In its recently published Green Paper, the European Commission 2010 discusses various methods to enhance the reliability of audits and to re-establish trust in the financial market. The Commission primarily focuses on increasing auditor independence and on reducing the high level of audit market...

This paper addresses the effects of a prohibition on providing non-audit services (NAS) to audit clients. By combining a strategic auditor-client game with a circular market-matching model that has an endogenous number of auditors, we take into account the interdependence between the auditors'...

Recently, a system of audit firm rotation has been implemented for the audits of listed companies conducted in the EU. In the US, in contrast, the regulator decided against such rotation. Whereas proponents argue that rotation would strengthen independence and decrease audit market...

Because mandatory audit firm rotation (MAR) limits the economic rents earned from a client, regulators regard MAR as a means to address the threat of impaired auditor independence. Moreover, regulators expect that MAR increases the dynamism of the audit market and decreases the market shares of...

For decades, legislators worldwide have been discussing the merits of regulating their national audit markets. In this debate, the focus has primarily been on the regulations' effects on incentives, both those of preparers of financial statements to report truthfully and those of auditors to...