Download or read book Do Big 4 Auditors Provide Higher Audit Quality After Controlling for the Endogenous Choice of Auditor written by John Daniel Eshleman and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent research suggests that Big 4 auditors do not provide higher audit quality than other auditors, after controlling for the endogenous choice of auditor. We re-examine this issue using the incidence of accounting restatements as a measure of audit quality. Using a propensity score matching procedure similar to that used by recent research to control for clients' endogenous choice of auditor, we find that clients of Big 4 audit firms are less likely to subsequently issue an accounting restatement than are clients of other auditors. In additional tests, we find weak evidence that clients of Big 4 auditors are less likely to issue accounting restatements than are clients of Mid-tier auditors (Grant Thornton and BDO Seidman). Taken together, the evidence suggests that Big 4 auditors do perform higher quality audits.

Download or read book Research on Professional Responsibility and Ethics in Accounting written by Charles Richard Baker and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2020-10-16 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a continuing of a long series focusing on professional responsibility and ethics in accounting.

Download or read book Institutions and Accounting Practices after the Financial Crisis written by Victoria Krivogorsky and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-01-30 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Financial globalization paired with the relaxation of constraints on capital flows between countries before the 2008 crisis, increased merger activities among the World’s largest stock exchanges. The financial crisis of 2008 had a severe impact on the development of equity markets, corporate financial stability, and corporate governance, and a multi-step approach is needed to fully appreciate the causes and effects of this event. This book engages the separate strands of literature to advance a more holistic understanding of whether and how the national institutional environments in selected countries around the world has been changed after the crisis. Institutions and Accounting Practices after the Financial Crisis: International Perspective sets out a framework for the analysis of institutional environments and accounting practices in in selected countries around the world during the pre-crisis period, followed by an examination of the impact of the crisis. It scrutinizes the changing roles of debt and equity markets; the shift in accounting practices and capital financing choices due to the economic downturn; and the lessons that can be obtained from the financial crisis, while considering the institutional architecture of international business environments. This ongoing process of integration and globalization increases interdependence between world markets, and allows shocks to propagate across national and continental lines, making the understanding of international markets vitally important to American investors. Aimed at primarily researchers, academics and students in the fields of international accounting, management and finance, Institutions and Accounting Practices after the Financial Crisis: International Perspective will additionally be of value to practitioners and policy makers, supplying them with information regarding the changes in accounting practices and risk evaluation due to the crisis.

Download or read book Corporate Finance written by Stefan Cristian Gherghina and published by MDPI. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book comprises 19 papers published in the Special Issue entitled “Corporate Finance”, focused on capital structure (Kedzior et al., 2020; Ntoung et al., 2020; Vintilă et al., 2019), dividend policy (Dragotă and Delcea, 2019; Pinto and Rastogi, 2019) and open-market share repurchase announcements (Ding et al., 2020), risk management (Chen et al., 2020; Nguyen Thanh, 2019; Štefko et al., 2020), financial reporting (Fossung et al., 2020), corporate brand and innovation (Barros et al., 2020; Błach et al., 2020), and corporate governance (Aluchna and Kuszewski, 2020; Dragotă et al.,2020; Gruszczyński, 2020; Kjærland et al., 2020; Koji et al., 2020; Lukason and Camacho-Miñano, 2020; Rashid Khan et al., 2020). It covers a broad range of companies worldwide (Cameroon, China, Estonia, India, Japan, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, United States, Vietnam), as well as various industries (heat supply, high-tech, manufacturing).

Download or read book Strategic Outlook in Business and Finance Innovation written by Hasan Dinçer and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Strategic Outlook in Business and Finance Innovation: Multidimensional Policies for Emerging Economies brings together new theoretical frameworks and develops appropriate strategies to improve the performance of firms globally.

Download or read book The Effect of Big Four Office Size on Audit Quality written by Dong Michael Yu and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Larger offices of Big Four accounting firms are argued to provide higher quality audits than smaller offices due to greater in-house experience and more expertise in ministering the audits of publicly listed clients. In addition, larger offices are less likely to have independent cerelated problems since an individual client is relatively less important due to larger client bases in bigger offices. My conjecture is tested for a sample of 6,568 firm-year observations for the period 2003 to 2005 that are audited by 285 unique offices of the Big Four accounting firms in the United States. The results are consistent with larger offices providing higher quality audits. Specifically, clients in larger offices evidence less earnings management (smaller abnormal accruals and less earnings benchmark beating behavior). Auditors in larger offices are also more likely to issue going concern audit reports, ceteris paribus. These results hold after controlling for industry leadership by individual accounting firms and specific offices, and the effects of both absolute client size and relative client size (i.e., client size relative to office size). Importantly, the results are robust to partitioning the sample into upper and lower halves of client size, which indicates the results are not driven by large clients (who may have inherently higher quality earnings). While accounting firms have incentives to provide uniform quality across all practice offices, particularly in the post-SOX era with PCAOB inspections, my results indicate that there are frictions in the ability of firms to accomplish this through their existing knowledge sharing practices and quality control procedures.

Download or read book Earnings Quality written by Patricia M. Dechow and published by Research Foundation of the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Is Audit Quality Different for Big 4 and Mid tier Auditors written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Prior research suggests that Big 4 auditors provide higher quality audits by virtue of their large size. Still, the recent reforms mandated by the Sarbanes Oxley Act -- by increasing client and auditor incentives for accurate reporting -- may have narrowed audit quality differences across auditor groups. In this paper, we examine audit quality for Big 4 and Mid-tier auditors during 2003-06 and include clients of other smaller audit firms for comparison purposes. We examine actual audit quality (as proxied by earnings management metrics) as well as perceived audit quality (as proxied by the client- and year-specific eloading and ex ante equity risk premium metrics). We include in our analysis only those Big 4 clients for whom the Mid-tier firms are potentially viable as auditors. Relative to other smaller audit firm clients, we find Big 4 and Mid-tier audit clients to have (1) lower levels of accrual management, (2) higher levels of real earnings management, and (3) higher levels of investor-perceived accruals quality. In each case, we were unable to reject the null that Big 4 and Mid-tier audits are similar. However, we find Big 4 audit clients to have a lower client-specific ex ante equity risk premium relative to both Mid-tier and other smaller audit firm clients. Collectively, our findings indicate that in situations where a Mid-tier auditor is potentially viable, Big 4 clients could utilize a Mid-tier firm without adversely affecting audit quality. Still, the results suggest that Big 4 clients have a lower ex ante cost of equity capital which is likely related to the insurance considerations ("deep pockets") -- rather than the audit quality -- associated with having a Big 4 auditor."

Download or read book Audits of Public Companies written by United States. Government Accountability Office and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Big 4 Global Networks written by M. Paulina Kassawat and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Big 4 global networks (Deloitte, Ernst & Young [E&Y], KPMG, and PricewaterhouseCoopers [PwC]) market themselves as providers of worldwide seamless services and consistent audit quality through their members. Under the current environment in which these auditors operate, there are three types of global network members: inspected non-U.S. affiliates (inspected affiliates, hereafter), non-inspected non-U.S. affiliates (non-inspected affiliates, hereafter), and inspected U.S. offices (U.S. offices, hereafter). The recent suspension of the China-based Big 4 affiliates from auditing U.S.-listed companies calls into question whether these global networks can deliver the same level of audit quality across all their members and whether those located in jurisdictions denying access to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB or Board, hereafter) to conduct inspections may benefit from such inspections. This study examines the effect of being an affiliate and the effect of PCAOB inspections on perceived audit quality. I use earnings response coefficients (ERCs) as a proxy for perceived audit quality. This study finds no evidence that affiliates have lower perceived audit quality than that of the U.S. offices. Additionally, I find no evidence that PCAOB inspected members have higher perceived audit quality than that of the non-inspected members. These results are robust to different measures of unexpected returns, unexpected earnings, and to using alternative approaches to determine when an auditor has been inspected. These findings are relevant because they provide evidence that the Big 4 global networks are delivering on their promise of providing similar audit quality through all their members. Additionally, the lack of results of the effect of PCAOB inspections on audit quality is inconsistent with accountability theory but may suggest that the internal review systems and other internally developed mechanisms by the global networks are as effective as external accountability measures.

Download or read book How Big 4 Firms Improve Audit Quality written by Limei Che and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 49 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper studies whether and how Big-4 firms provide higher quality audits than non-Big-4 firms. Specifically, we first examine a Big-4 effect and then explore three sources of the Big-4 effect. To test the Big-4 effect, we use a unique dataset of individual audit partners for a large sample of private companies and employ a novel research design exploiting the fact that auditees may follow the auditor who switches affiliation from a non-Big-4 to a Big-4 firm. Thus, we compare audit quality and audit fees of the same partner-auditee pairs before and after the switch. The results show that the Big-4 effect exists in the private-firm segment. More importantly, we find evidence for three sources of the Big-4 effect. First, Big-4 firms are able to recruit non-Big-4 partners who deliver higher audit quality than other non-Big 4 partners in the pre-switch period. Second, enhanced learning has taken place after the switch. Third, the increased audit quality can also be attributed to stronger incentives/monitoring. These are new findings to the literature.

Download or read book Office Size of Big 4 Auditors and Client Restatements written by Jere R. Francis and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Francis and Yu (2009) and Choi, Kim, Kim, and Zang (2010) report evidence that Big 4 audits are of higher quality when the engagement office is of larger size: specifically, client earnings quality is higher and auditors in larger offices are more likely to issue going concern audit reports. We extend this line of research to test if larger Big 4 offices have fewer client restatements. A client restatement provides more direct evidence of a low-quality audit than earnings quality metrics or going concern reports, because a restatement indicates the client's auditor did not effectively enforce the correct application of GAAP at the time the original financial statements were issued. We analyze 2,557 firm-year restatements in a sample of 23,190 financial statements originally issued by U.S. firms in 2003-2008. We find that Big 4 office size is associated with fewer client restatements after controlling for innate client characteristics that may affect restatements (client size, financial performance, industry membership, non-financial measures, off-balance sheet activities, and market-related measures), and a set of controls for other auditor factors such as fees and industry expertise. The study raises important questions about the ability of smaller offices to deliver high-quality audits for SEC registrants.

Download or read book Auditor Size and Audit Quality Revisited written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The objective of this thesis is to revisit the notion of audit quality and investigate how it is related to auditor size and the structure of the auditing industry. Specifically, I propose a model of audit firm competition where both audit quality and auditor size are endogenous and predict how market characteristics, namely market size and investor protection regime, affect the structure of the auditing industry and differences between Big-4 and Non-Big-4 audit quality and fees. I show that Big-4 audit firms compete mostly on audit value (i.e., quality and price) through investments in audit technology, the level of which is increasing in both market size and investor protection. Consistent with my predictions, empirical results for the U.S. audit market, where investor protection is held constant across local markets, confirm that the audit industry is characterised as a natural oligopoly dominated by the higher quality Big-4 audit firms. More importantly, I find that Big-4 audit value is increasing in market size. In particular, Big-4 audit quality, relative to Non-Big-4 audits is constant in market size while Big-4 audit fee premium is decreasing in market size. I also present detailed hypotheses adapted to a cross-country setting to empirically evaluate the impact of investor protection regimes on characteristics of the audit industry and the audit product. Although I leave to future research actual empirical testing, preliminary evidence reviewed from other studies generally supports my hypotheses. My thesis has direct policy implications as it provides key insights about the audit industry, how audit firms compete and how the industry evolves. Taken together, my results imply that the audit industry is naturally concentrated yet remains overall competitive. That is, Big-4 audit quality and fees are not adversely affected, thus far, by the high level of auditor concentration and Big-4 market power. Accordingly, recent concerns about high auditor concentration,

Download or read book When Big 4 Dominance is Broken written by Zixuan Lina Li and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2013, audit firm mergers created two “Chinese” audit firms – Ruihua and BDO Lixin – that outranked EY and KPMG to become two of the four largest audit firms in China in terms of total audit revenue. In this thesis, I examine the impact of this change in audit industry structure on the economic behavior, i.e. audit pricing and audit quality, of these two large local audit firms – or Big L – relative to the Big 4 and the other local audit firms. Using a difference-in-differences design, I find that the pre-post change in audit fees for the Big L auditors is significantly higher than that for the Big 4 and the other local audit firms around the mergers. In addition, I find that the Big L firms had a significant improvement in audit quality after the mergers, relative to the Big 4 firms over the same period. That is, holding everything else constant, the Big L had higher propensity to issue modified audit opinions and their clients exhibited improved earnings quality in the post-merger period. In contrast, I find evidence of a decline in audit fees and deterioration of earnings quality for clients of the Big 4 auditors around the mergers. I interpret the results as consistent with a shift in the relative market power among the large audit suppliers in China and the development of brand name reputations by the Big L firms, which provided the ability and incentive for the Big L firms to conduct higher quality audits in the post-merger period. On the other hand, the Big 4 audit firms lost some market power and auditor independence as new large competitors emerged in the industry. This thesis answers calls by Francis (2011) and DeFond and Zhang (2014) for further research on the effects of changes in market structure in the audit industry. Implications for various regulators, including the Ministry of Finance of PRC, the European Commission, and the U.S. SEC, are discussed.

Download or read book Observational Studies written by Paul R. Rosenbaum and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-29 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An observational study is an empirical investigation of the effects of treatments, policies, or exposures. It differes from an experiment in that the investigator cannot control the assignments of treatments to subjects. Scientists across a wide range of disciplines undertake such studies, and the aim of this book is to provide a sound statistical account of the principles and methods for the design and analysis of observational studies. Readers are assumed to have a working knowledge of basic probability and statistics, but otherwise the account is reasonably self-contained. Throughout there are extended discussions of actual observational studies to illustrate the ideas discussed. These are drawn from topics as diverse as smoking and lung cancer, lead in children, nuclear weapons testing, and placement programs for students. As a result, many researchers involved in observational studes will find this an invaluable companion to their work.

Download or read book Audits of Public Companies written by United States. General Accounting Office and published by Nova Publishers. This book was released on 2008 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines (1) concentration in the market for public company audits, (2) the potential for smaller accounting firms' growth to ease market concentration, and (3) proposals that have been offered by others for easing concentration and the barriers facing smaller firms in expanding their market shares.

Download or read book What are the Drivers of Audit Quality After an Auditor Change Evidence from Voluntary and Mandatory Auditor Switches written by Ulf Mohrmann and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the accounting literature implies that increased discretionary accruals follow auditor changes, the underlying causal mechanism of this increase remains unclear. The potential reasons are the loss of the auditor's firm-specific knowledge or the firm's opportunistic choice of a new auditor. Differentiating between the drivers is important to understand the consequences of auditor changes and to decide on a regulatory reaction. Using the unique legal environment in the European Union, this study uses both voluntary and mandatory auditor changes to distinguish between these explanations. Whereas the loss of firm-specific knowledge affects both types of auditor changes, mandatory changes are less affected by opportunistic choices. I find that voluntary auditor changes are positively associated with discretionary accruals but not mandatory changes. The difference between the mandatory and voluntary changes is highly significant even after controlling for self-selection. Thus, the decrease in reporting quality is due to the strategic decision to change the auditor rather than to the loss of firm-specific knowledge.