To ensure that audit committees provide sufficient oversight over the auditing process and quality of financial reporting, legislators have imposed stricter requirements on the independence of audit committee members. Although many audit committees appear to be “fully” independent, anecdotal...

Peer group benchmarking, which compares executive compensation contracts against a group of similar companies, is a widely used yet heavily debated technique for setting executive compensation. Critics argue that it has produced an increase in top executive compensation. Prior research indeed...

We explore whether the use of a high-reputation auditor mitigates horizontal agency costs of tax avoidance associated with ownership conflicts in private firms. Using a high-reputation auditor may impact tax avoidance as follows. First, the auditor's own reputation concerns limit client tax...