Taken together, the results of this study suggest that dividends provide information to auditors and mitigate concerns over their clients’ earnings quality. It appears dividends provide incremental information to auditors beyond other audit risk indicators, such as low earnings persistence or high accruals. These findings also suggest that firms’ dividend-paying status provides an easily observable cue to auditors and others that can be used when assessing a firms’ earnings quality. 

Lawson, B. P. and D. Wang. 2016. The Earnings Quality Information Content of Dividend Policies and Audit Pricing. Contemporary Accounting Research 33 (4): 1685 – 1719. 

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The importance of understanding the operation of a client’s business and its competitive environment to achieve an effective audit is well-known. More specifically, the PCAOB requires that an auditor understand the company’s objectives and strategies and those related business risks that might reasonably be expected to result in risks of material misstatement. Valid understanding also is necessary to both interpret results from analytical procedures and to engage in effective professional skepticism for management’s assertions. The author’s results reveal a previously unreported level of understanding of process-oriented business risks and their association with the RMM of revenue for essentially new staff auditors. 

Wright, W. F. 2016. Client business, models, process business risks and the risk of material misstatement of revenue. Accounting, Organizations and Society 48: 43-55. 

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This study is important given the continued concerns expressed by global regulators about the potential harm to audit quality caused by concentrated audit markets. The separation of offsetting direct and indirect effects of concentration on audit quality enhances the understanding of how concentration influences audit quality and could explain why the previous studies document mixed evidences. The study also provides evidence on how audit fees play an important role in the association between concentration and audit quality and that regulatory interventions changing one of the offsetting effects could produce potential unintended consequences. 

Huang, T., Chang, H., and Chiou, J. 2016. Audit Market Concentration, Audit Fees, and Audit Quality: Evidence from China. Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory 35 (2): 121-145.

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 This study illustrates new measures of spatial competition that incorporate the separate and distinct effects of competition within and between the large and small audit markets. This study also provides evidence that the pricing in the large firm market segment is affected by competitive pressure from small audit firms; furthermore, the study provides evidence of a differentiation premium that small audit firms are able to obtain by being perceived as competing in a bigger league than other small audit firms. Finally, the study contributes by examining measures of competition beyond the Herfindahl index in the audit firm market.

Bills, K.L. and N.M. Stephens. 2016. Spatial Competition at the Intersection of the Large and Small Audit Firm Markets. Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory 35 (1): 23-45.

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