Business Commons^™

Usefulness Of Audit-Firm Transparency Disclosures, Jooanne Choi

2022

South Korea is one of the first countries to enact audit transparency disclosure, requiring public accounting firms to file an annual report containing information on audit production, governance, operations, on-going litigations, and regulatory inspection results. In this dissertation, I make use of this rich information setting to address issues concerning audit quality management systems, audit-firm governance, and resource allocation in audit productions.

Motivated by the recent call from the PCAOB (Public Companies Accounting Oversight Board) for better understanding of audit-firm quality control system, the first chapter (sole-authored) examines the determinants of and return on firm-level investment in quality management. I …

Audit Firm Culture: An Evolution Of The Audit Profession In Response To External Forces, Christina T. Alberti

2022

The COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting business operations throughout the world, including the working procedures of audit professionals. Yet, to date, research on COVID-19’s impact on auditing is limited. This is despite its potential long-term implications. Thus, my dissertation uses a mix of research methods to examine auditors’ response to, and regulators’ evaluation of auditors’ response to, COVID-19.

The first paper (co-authored) synthesizes research on audit firm culture (AFC) over the past decade, reviewing recent developments in research on AFC and its influence on audit quality and auditors’ work attitudes. Using a three-phase model based on prior research and professional guidance, …

Health And Healthcare In The Financial Reporting And Audit Environments, Landi Morris

2022

This dissertation is comprised of three papers that integrate analyses of health, health crises, and healthcare entities in the financial reporting and audit processes. The first paper considers how physical health influences audit outcomes via auditors’ cognitive processing. The second paper considers a global health disruption that impacts the audit process. In the third paper, I examine financial and tax reporting of hospital entities. I describe each paper in further detail below.

The first paper, co-authored with Rani Hoitash, examines whether influenza (flu), a potential threat to the conduct of public company audits, is associated with audit outcomes. Because the …

Three Papers On Sell-Side Financial Analysts, Zheng Liu

2022

This first paper (co-authored) tests the effect of Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II), which entered into force on 3 January 2018, on European-based sell-side financial analysts. We find that MiFID II, in part, unbundles brokers’ execution and research services. We assess the effectiveness of MiFID II in unbundling and find that the trading volume generated by the brokers that issued recommendation revisions declined significantly after the enactment of MiFID II. Further, in addition to a smaller price reaction to EU broker analysts’ recommendation revisions in the post period than in the pre period, these broker analysts appear …