We study the economic consequences of mandates that require bank auditors to report to bank supervisors. Based on survey responses from the European Central Bank and all 28 national bank regulators within the European Union and a review of national banking regulations, we create a novel dataset...

This study provides evidence of a directly observable and significant cost of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption, by examining the fees incurred by firms for the statutory audit of their financial statements at the time of transition. Using a comprehensive dataset of all...

While the shareholder benefits of audits are well documented, evidence on whether audits can facilitate opportunistic behavior by corporate insiders is scarce. In this paper, we examine whether the audit process facilitates one particular form of opportunism: informed trading by corporate...