No abstract

No abstract

SUMMARY A judgment problem associated with auditing subsequent events is that auditors fail to adequately respond to subsequent events identified late in the audit. One possible source of this failure to respond could be that subsequent events are typically discovered near the end of the audit when the auditor has established an initial view regarding the fair presentation of the financial statements. Our first experiment provides evidence that auditors propose smaller audit adjustments to subsequent events following prior commitment when the control environment risk is low, relative to when there is no prior commitment. Our second experiment examines whether a requirement for process accountability can mitigate the effect of prior commitment on auditor judgment. We find that process accountability (a requirement to justify the processes leading to a decision), rather than outcome accountability (the need to justify a final decision), can effectively mitigate auditors' biases arising from prior commitment.

We investigate the justifications provided by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) when sanctioning audit firms and individual auditors, as disclosed in the publicly released Settled Disciplinary Orders (SDOs). Employing responsive regulation theory, we seek to gain an understanding of violating behaviors by audit firms and individual auditors that attract regulatory responses ranging in nature from persuasive to punitive sanctions. Using 298 SDOs issued by the PCAOB from 2005 to 2020, we find that the frequency and severity of PCAOB sanctions at the firm level are positively associated with auditing standards violations, independence issues, and reckless behavior. At the individual auditor level, integrity violations and reckless behavior are positively associated with the frequency and severity of PCAOB sanctions. Our findings indicate that significantly higher financial penalties for individual auditors (audit firms) arise from manipulation of audit evidence (quality control criticisms). Further, the PCAOB financially penalizes Big 4-affiliated auditors and firms significantly more than their non-Big 4 counterparts. Other factors such as multiple individuals being implicated in an SDO and whether a firm and individual(s) are both implicated in the SDO are important considerations in sanction(s) imposed by the PCAOB. Overall, our findings suggest that the PCAOB adopts a responsive enforcement strategy when monitoring the auditors in their ethical and audit compliance efforts.

We examine whether the communication of combined assurance is effective in increasing favourable investment decisions towards a company with negative financial performance. We find that the communication of combined assurance, compared to when only corporate social responsibility (CSR) assurance is communicated, results in a more significant impact on investors' decisions to invest when the company has negative performance, but this effect is less significant when the company has positive performance. When the company has positive performance, perceived reliability and willingness to invest do not change regardless of whether combined assurance is included or not.