The audit market has changed significantly over the last few years. Clients' internationalisation and their extended service demands have required a diversification that can best be delivered by large and internationally-adjusted audit firms. This demand resulted in important mergers among national as well as with international audit companies going along with a growing concentration on the German audit market. This study is based on the 200 largest German listed stock corporations with respect to average stock capital for the years 1991 and 1994 and is concerned with the investigation into whether the concentration process continues and whether there are developments representing German particularities. Copyright

The audit market is subject to ongoing regulation to ensure or improve the quality of audit services. For this reason, international research on the audit market is highly popular. As part of this discussion, pricing is considered one of the most relevant aspects of audits. However, a remarkable heterogeneity of the control variables used in empirical studies can be observed. Prior meta-analyses on audit fees already summarized and categorized them for audit fee studies covering financial periods until fiscal year 2007. We contribute to the international literature with an up-to date and systematic review approach on audit fee studies published in international relevant scientific journals (JQ3 A + , A, B). In addition to prior reviews and meta-analyses, we finally suggest a standard model for the most important fee drivers that can be used for future audit fee studies. Our unique approach is based on an EBSCO keyword search with a sample of 385 papers published in international relevant scientific journals (JQ3 A + , A, B) and is using a scoring model to assess significance of audit fee control variables. On the one hand, we enrich the literature by a new state of the art paper on pricing within audit firms. On the other hand, we contribute to the international literature on audit markets from a theoretical point of view by deriving a new testable model of audit fee determinants. Therefore, our empirical results provide several fundamental insights that can be used for further empirical and theoretical research on the pricing of audit services. Thus, the results are meaningful not only for researchers within the field of auditing but also for experts in management, pricing or European legislature.

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After almost every economic crisis and corporate scandal, political actors announce the need for stricter regulatory measures for financial markets and companies, in an attempt to appease their voters and defend their political agenda. Regarding the latest international financial crisis, the EU responded, among other things, with comprehensive regulation of the European audit market. In the context of auditor rotation, after 17 June 2016, the duration of audit engagements should not exceed a maximum of 10 years. In this paper, we therefore investigate whether there is empirical evidence behind the 10-year threshold—or is it simply arbitrary? Our aim is to evaluate the audit market reform by the European Union (EU) (Regulation (EU) No 537/2014 and Directive, 2014/56/EU) related to the objective of improving the quality of audits. Therefore, our article addresses the most crucial element of this reform, the implementation of a mandatory audit firm rotation for public interest entities (Regulation (EU) No 537/2014, Article 17). Based on a unique dataset of 11,834 firm observations from all listed companies within the EU between 2008 and 2017, we provide for the first time a discussion basis for the assessment of audit market interventions by the EU. Hence, we compare the new maximum durations with average audit tenure in the particular member states. Even where we present only descriptive results, our results at least indicate that the “magic number” 10 (years) could be more the result of a political process—i.e., a consent between the European institutions—rather than evidence based. Therefore, our findings shall serve as a first starting point in the discussion of a vast and interdisciplinary research field.

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