A large auditing literature concludes that Big N auditors provide higher audit quality than non-Big N auditors. Recently, however, a high profile study suggests that Propensity Score Matching (PSM) on client characteristics eliminates the Big N effect (Lawrence, Minutti-Meza, and Zhang 2011,...

This paper updates how archival audit research has evolved since the summary in Francis (2004) of what we knew then about audit quality. The paper describes an evolution from “going big” and asking basic questions about the audit market, institutions, and audit quality, to “going small”...