While the shareholder benefits of audits are well documented, evidence on whether audits can facilitate opportunistic behavior by corporate insiders is scarce. In this paper, we examine whether the audit process facilitates one particular form of opportunism: informed trading by corporate...

We address whether SOX 404(b) internal control audits under two auditing standards regimes and SOX 404(a) management assessments are associated with improved internal control system quality, an important and largely unstudied potential benefit. In 2013, the PCAOB disclosed fifteen percent of...

This study examines the relationship between audit personnel salaries and office-level audit quality. We measure audit personnel salaries at the Associate, Senior and Manager ranks for Big 4 audit offices from 2004 to 2013 using unique data obtained from the U.S. Department of Labor. We find...

This study examines the role of the external audit in management's decision about the amount of GAAP financial statement information to disclose in the annual earnings announcement. The earnings announcement is a key disclosure provided by public companies. Yet, there is no requirement that...

We examine the impact of PCAOB Auditing Standard No. 5 (“AS5”) and the economic recession on risk characteristics and degree of auditor/client misalignment in the publicly-traded client portfolios of Big 4 firms. AS5 and the economic recession both likely resulted in an increase in audit...

This study examines the relation between audit personnel salaries and office-level audit quality. We measure audit personnel salaries at the associate, senior and manager ranks for Big 4 audit offices from 2004 to 2013 using unique individual auditor level data obtained from the U.S. Department...

There has been a substantial increase, since 2004, in the number of firms that announce annual earnings before audit completion as opposed to after audit completion. In this study, we argue that earnings announced before audit completion are associated with lower financial reporting quality and...

We examine whether delays in the expected release of annual earnings have implications for the future auditor-client relationship. Managers have strong incentives to release earnings on schedule and auditors play an important role in helping their clients avoid costly earnings announcement...