SYNOPSIS: Earnings management remains a popular topic of debate and discussion among investors, regulators, analysts, and the public. One mechanism that might mitigate earnings management is auditors’ industry expertise. Using a large sample of clients of Big 6 auditors, this research examines the association between auditor industry expertise, measured in terms of both auditor market share in ...

Extant research typically uses a variation of Big N auditor, discretionary accruals, audit fees, accrual quality, going-concern opinions, or meet or beat the quarterly earnings target as a proxy for audit quality. We provide evidence on the construct validity of these measures by evaluating whether they are able to successfully predict alleged audit deficiencies in engagements that are the subj...

This study analyzes the pricing of auditors’ business risk in the first year of an audit engagement. We posit that reportable events from the prior auditor’s tenure that are disclosed in the 8-K auditor change filing provide reliable information about the level of business risk for the incoming auditor. We hypothesize that for clients perceived as risky, the incoming auditor charges a fee-premi...

Conducting a Security Audit of an Oracle Database The focus of the paper is on auditing access controls to Oracle databases. What should the auditor evaluate and test to enable him to give an informed opinion about the security of an information system based on an Oracle database? A number of issues that the auditor should evaluate are discussed in the paper, with indications of how these issue...

There has been a long-standing debate as to the relative merits of mandatory auditor rotation. In the United States (US), Section 203 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) (SOX) requires rotation of the lead engagement partner and the concurring review partner at least once every five years. Section 207 also requires a study on the potential effects of mandatory audit firm rotation. After conducting...

The development and existence of appropriate, high quality auditing standards is the fi rst step in the road to quality audits. Auditing standards serve several important purposes including defi ning what an audit is, promoting consistency, facilitating education, providing a means to judge performance, and, most of all, infl uencing auditor behavior. Standards also affect many of the other fac...

It has been reported in the literature on strategic auditing that audit risk (the probability of audit failure) may increase when the auditor obtains information, whereas conditions for such cases have not been identified as yet. This paper provides simple models to analyze the general tendencies of exogenous parameters for such cases. The analysis shows that audit risk increases with more info...

This study aims to see how the influence of professional auditors on quality auditors. Reports that can be trusted with good audit reduce fears manipulation in financial statements presented a company and increase public confidence reliability reports have been audited by accountant. Findings research professionalism auditor agrees implemented. seen from acquisition % score 72.40%. Furthermore,...

This paper investigates how executive compensation affects the reliability of the information disclosed to investors. When incentive contracts are based on reported profits, a manager may respond to an increase in incentive compensation by decreasing effort. To both motivate the manager and maintain the quality of disclosure, it is necessary to introduce third-party verification of profits. I a...

This article explores recent regulatory reforms in Italy and analyzes the fi rst-time application of mandatory disclosure in annual reports of audit and non-audit fees. This information can convey to readers of fi nancial statements an indication of auditor independence (in appearance). An empirical analysis is conducted on annual reports of 239 Italian listed companies for the year 2007. The m...