We exploit a 2008 regulatory change in a Canadian province to investigate the association between engagement partner identification (EPI) and audit quality (AQ) and to illustrate the implications of control group design choices on this association. In contrast to prior studies, firms in our...

This paper derives the impacts of legal system characteristics and auditing standards on auditor behavior (audit quality), and analyzes the determination of optimal auditing standards under different legal regimes. Legal regimes are characterized by differences in the uncertainty concerning the...

The extant auditing literature documents an inconsistent relationship between audit fees and market concentration. In this paper, we argue that the impact of market concentration on audit fees is auditor and auditee specific. Based on the fact that the audit services to an auditee are generally...

Building on an auction model, we examine the economic consequences of audit retendering, under which the incumbent auditor in auction possesses both an information advantage and knowledge advantage over outside auditors. Audit retendering allows the firm to retain the incumbent auditor with...

Conventional wisdom holds that joint audits would improve audit quality by enhancing audit evidence precision, because “Two heads are better than one,” and by enhancing auditor independence, because it is more expensive for a company to “bribe” two audit firms than one. Our paper...