This paper investigates whether the provision of non-audit services (NAS) to audit clients impairs auditor independence of mind and independence in appearance. The main contributions of this paper are in terms of its timeliness with respect to regulatory changes, the simultaneous examination of...

This paper analyses how investor protection provided by the institutional setting in which a firm operates affects the quality of its board of directors. It also investigates whether firms operating in contexts with weaker investor protection rely more on internal corporate governance to prevent...

Using the most recent observations (2005-2011) from a sample of UK listed companies, this study investigates whether Big 4 audit firms exhibit a ‘fee premium' and, if this is the case, whether the premium is related to the delivery of a better audit service.Univariate tests, multivariate...

Financial institutions and the arts have been a historical and natural duo since the Middle Ages, when bankers supported the arts sector and artists. This paper investigates the corporate governance (CG) characteristics of today's financial institutions that engage more extensively with...

The pricing of Big 4 industry leadership is examined for a sample of U.K. publicly-listed companies, and adds to the evidence from the Australian and U.S. audit markets that city-specific industry leadership commands a fee premium. There is a significant fee premium for city-specific industry...

We investigate the potential for a client to use a same-firm office switch as a mechanism for audit opinion shopping, relying on the framework developed by Lennox (2000). Opinion shopping in this context could either be informationally motivated (Dye 1991) or driven by managerial opportunism....