Following major failures in corp. financial reporting, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was enacted to protect investors through requirements intended to improve the accuracy and reliability of corp. disclosures and to restore investor confidence. The act strengthened auditor independence and improved audit quality. Mandatory audit firm rotation (setting a limit on the period of years a public accounting (PA) firm may audit a particular company's financial statements) was considered as a reform to enhance auditor independence and audit quality during the hearings that preceded the act, but it was not included in the act. This report studies the potential effects of requiring rotation of the PA firms that audit public companies registered with the SEC.

Audit Regulations, Audit Market Structure, and Financial Reporting Quality provides a structured overview of the empirical and analytical literature on the effects of audit market regulations. After a short introduction, the monograph is organized as follows. Chapter II addresses the structure of the audit markets of industrialized countries. First presenting an overview of the concentration metrics used to describe the structure of an audit market or a market segment, then providing the empirical findings on audit market concentration at the national level and presenting an overview of the main reasons that led to the currently high degree of concentration. Chapter III summarizes the reasons why regulators worldwide consider a high degree of concentration to be a concern. In particular, it reviews the regulator's assumption that a high degree of concentration inevitably leads to a low degree of competition and to the corresponding effects of low audit quality and high audit fees. It also provides an overview of the empirical findings on the association between concentration and audit quality and fees, respectively. Chapter IV introduces the mandatory audit firm rotation, the prohibition on the joint supply of audit and non-audit services, and joint audits as examples for regulations that are likely to have both incentive and market structure effects. Chapter V summarizes the empirical findings on the effects of these regulations on audit quality and market structure. Chapter VI summarizes models that regard the market structure as given. The results from these models show that the effects of regulations are not straightforward, but depend on various factors related to the auditor, the client, and the legal environment. Chapter VII gives an overview of analytical research that simultaneously considers incentive effects and market structure effects. It also provides a brief overview of industrial organization models that seem suitable to expand the models applied to investigate the effects of audit regulations. Chapter VIII concludes and highlights avenues for future research.

Auditing has been a subject of some controversy, and there have been repeated attempts at reforming its practice globally. This comprehensive companion surveys the state of the discipline, including emerging and cutting-edge trends. It covers the most important and controversial issues, including auditing ethics, auditor independence, social and environmental accounting as well as the future of the field. This handbook is vital reading for legislators, regulators, professionals, commentators, students and researchers involved with auditing and accounting. The collection will also prove an ideal starting place for researchers from other fields looking to break into this vital subject.

Audits provide essential accountability and transparency over government programs. Given the current challenges facing governments and their programs, the oversight provided through auditing is more critical than ever. Government auditing provides the objective analysis and information needed to make the decisions necessary to help create a better future. The professional standards presented in this 2018 revision of Government Auditing Standards (known as the Yellow Book) provide a framework for performing high-quality audit work with competence, integrity, objectivity, and independence to provide accountability and to help improve government operations and services. These standards, commonly referred to as generally accepted government auditing standards (GAGAS), provide the foundation for government auditors to lead by example in the areas of independence, transparency, accountability, and quality through the audit process. This revision contains major changes from, and supersedes, the 2011 revision.

This text offers a structured approach to principles of auditing using International Standards on Auditing as its basis. Written by a team of influential professional auditors with a wealth of teaching experience this book provides a real world perspective on current auditing practices with coverage of cutting edge developments and techniques. The full text downloaded to your computer With eBooks you can: search for key concepts, words and phrases make highlights and notes as you study share your notes with friends eBooks are downloaded to your computer and accessible either offline through the Bookshelf (available as a free download), available online and also via the iPad and Android apps. Upon purchase, you'll gain instant access to this eBook. Time limit The eBooks products do not have an expiry date. You will continue to access your digital ebook products whilst you have your Bookshelf installed.

This review lays out a research perspective on earnings quality. We provide an overview of alternative definitions and measures of earnings quality and a discussion of research design choices encountered in earnings quality research. Throughout, we focus on a capital markets setting, as opposed, for example, to a contracting or stewardship setting. Our reason for this choice stems from the view that the capital market uses of accounting information are fundamental, in the sense of providing a basis for other uses, such as stewardship. Because resource allocations are ex ante decisions while contracting/stewardship assessments are ex post evaluations of outcomes, evidence on whether, how and to what degree earnings quality influences capital market resource allocation decisions is fundamental to understanding why and how accounting matters to investors and others, including those charged with stewardship responsibilities. Demonstrating a link between earnings quality and, for example, the costs of equity and debt capital implies a basic economic role in capital allocation decisions for accounting information; this role has only recently been documented in the accounting literature. We focus on how the precision of financial information in capturing one or more underlying valuation-relevant constructs affects the assessment and use of that information by capital market participants. We emphasize that the choice of constructs to be measured is typically contextual. Our main focus is on the precision of earnings, which we view as a summary indicator of the overall quality of financial reporting. Our intent in discussing research that evaluates the capital market effects of earnings quality is both to stimulate further research in this area and to encourage research on related topics, including, for example, the role of earnings quality in contracting and stewardship.