While auditor attestation of the effectiveness of internal control over financial reporting (ICFR) is required for firms with a public float of at least $75 million (accelerated filers), the SEC has delayed auditor attestation for non-accelerated filers several times. The Dodd-Frank Act of 2010...

There is a dearth of business ethics research on family firms, despite the importance of such firms to the U.S. economy (Vazquez 2016). We answer Vazquez's (2016) call to examine the intersection of family firms research and business ethics, by investigating whether external auditors assess...

What are the implications of major customer dependency, i.e., the degree of a supplier firm's dependency on its major customers, for external auditors? While the conventional view emphasizes the negatives of major customer dependency for client business risk, we find that suppliers with more...

The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the relations between audit outcomes and accounting standard design (principles-based vs. rules-based) for US firms. Considering that audit outcomes may vary with audit risk, which may differ under different accounting standards, we examine and...

While prior research has examined the relation between firm-level attributes and auditors' decisions, there is little empirical evidence on whether managerial attributes are informative to auditors. We examine the relation between managerial ability, i.e., ability in transforming corporate...

As a result of the global financial crisis (GFC), several audit clients were able to negotiate lower audit fees for the years 2008 and 2009. However, the PCAOB has expressed concern that lower audit fees might lead to lower audit effort and lower audit quality and financial reporting quality....

Capitalization of software research and development costs (SDC) under SFAS No. 86 is the only exception to SFAS No. 2 which calls for immediate expensing of R&D costs. Although intangible assets have become increasingly relevant for firm valuation, they remain largely unexplored in audit...