The critical global role of audit firms, combined with the scarcity of qualified staff and downward pressure on fees, has increased the importance of understanding efficiency in this industry. This paper examines the technical and allocative inefficiencies of audit firm staffing using data from...

This paper examines the 2017 audit inspection scandal involving KPMG — one of the fewbreaches of “tone at the top” at a Big 4 audit firm — to study whether and how the scandal affectsKPMG and its clients. From the federal court trial related to the scandal, we construct a novel dataset...