Auditors are Known by the Companies They Keep
Name
SSRN-id3326595.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
1.22 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
dcf7b7c8285674dd8998f9e8c31b9fc1
Author(s)
Cook, Jonathan
Kowaleski, Zachary T
Minnis, Michael
Sutherland, Andrew
Zehms, Karla M
Date Issued
2020
Journal
Journal of Accounting and Economics
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
© 2020 Elsevier B.V. We study the role of reputation in auditor-client matching. Using 1.2 million employment records from US broker-dealers, we find that broker-dealer clients of the same auditor have similar financial adviser misconduct profiles. Our estimates indicate that variation in client misconduct behavior is nearly half as important as variation in client size in explaining matches. Auditors adjust their portfolios when presented with new information about client behavior, and those with the most significant reputation concerns are least likely to deal with high misconduct clients. Finally, we find that an auditor's reputation for accepting high misconduct clients predicts their new clients' future misconduct. Together, our results present new evidence on how reputation affects audit relationships, and the consequences of auditors' reputation concerns for client behavior. Our results also indicate an unintended consequence of audit mandates: non-discerning auditors emerge to serve clients with low endogenous demand for auditing.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JACCECO.2020.101314
