The research assesses whether the two Big Eight mergers of 1989 were anticompetitive or efficiency enhancing. The study determines how a merger would affect the merged firm's probability of winning an auction to supply audit services under four different merger theories. A data set of 1,978...

The unprecedented migration of Andersen's clients that followed Andersen's indictment in March 2002 potentially placed a large burden on successor auditors' audit resources. We refer to this strain, measured at the local-office level, as auditor capacity stress. We examine the effect of auditor...