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open access

Auditors’ Information Search and Documentation: Does Knowledge of the Client Preference Or PCAOB Accountability Pressure Matter?

Description: Auditors regularly make judgments regarding whether a client’s chosen accounting policy is appropriate and in accordance with generally accepted accounting Principles (GAAP). However, to form this judgment, auditors must either possess adequate topic-specific knowledge or must gain such knowledge through information search. This search is subject to numerous biases, including a bias toward confirmation of a client’s preference. It is important to further our understanding of bias in audito… more
Date: May 2012
Creator: Olvera, Renee M.
open access

The Changing Role and Responsibilities of Audit Committees in the United States

Description: The corporate form that developed in the early 20th century created enormous pressure for corporate governance mechanisms to curb the power of corporate managers. Berle and Means, legal pluralists, warned about concentrating economic power in the hands of a small but powerful class of professional managers. They claimed this "new form of absolutism" required governmental oversight and viewed boards of directors as part of management, rather than monitors for shareholders. The Securities and Exc… more
Date: August 2010
Creator: Teed, Dan Graham
open access

Effects of Auditor-provided Tax Services on Book-tax Differences and Investors’ Mispricing of Book-tax Differences

Description: In this study, I investigate the effect of auditor-provided tax services (ATS) on firms’ levels of book-tax differences and investors’ mispricing of book-tax differences. The joint provision of audit and tax services has been a controversial issue among regulators and academic researchers. Evidence on whether ATS improve or impair the overall accounting quality is inconclusive as a result of the specific testing circumstances involved in different studies. Book-tax differences capture managers’… more
Date: May 2015
Creator: Luo, Bing
open access

The Effects of Goal Difficulty and Monitoring Frequency on Effort and Risk Taking Decisions

Description: Management control systems perform a vital role in facilitating the accomplishment of organizational objectives. To effectively align the objectives of employees with those of the organization, firms balance multiple control mechanisms to encourage organizationally desired behaviors and discourage undesired behaviors. The purpose of my dissertation was two-fold. First, I assessed how changes in monitoring frequency influenced employee behaviors and the overall function of the management control… more
Date: May 2014
Creator: Shoemaker, Nikki L.
open access

An Experimental Examination of the Effects of Fraud Specialist and Audit Mindsets on Fraud Risk Assessments and on the Development of Fraud-Related Problem Representations

Description: Fraud risk assessment is an important audit process that has a direct impact on the effectiveness of auditors' fraud detection in an audit. However, prior literature has shown that auditors are generally poor at assessing fraud risk. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) suggests that auditors may improve their fraud risk assessment performance by adopting a fraud specialist mindset. A fraud specialist mindset is a special way of thinking about accounting records. While auditors… more
Date: August 2010
Creator: Chui, Lawrence
open access

An Experimental Examination Of The Effects Of Goal Framing And Time Pressure On Auditors’ Professional Skepticism

Description: Professional skepticism is a critical component of audit practice and current auditing standards direct auditors to remain skeptical throughout the duration of each audit engagement. Despite the importance and prevalence of an emphasis on professional skepticism throughout auditing standards, evidence indicates that auditors often fail to exercise an appropriate degree of professional skepticism. Prior accounting research suggests that auditors’ professionally skeptical behavior is affected by … more
Date: December 2011
Creator: Robinson, Shani N.
open access

The Impact of Social Learning and Social Norms on Auditor Choice

Description: The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the influences of industry dynamic factors (e.g., peer selections) on a client’s subsequent decision to select the type of auditor (e.g., Big N versus non-Big N), following auditor turnover. More specifically, drawing on social norms and social learning theories, I develop testable implications and investigate whether and how industry dynamics have an incremental power in explaining auditor choice beyond traditional firm-specific variables document… more
Date: August 2014
Creator: Li, Xudong
open access

A Reexamination of the Dilution of Auditor Misstatement Risk Assessments: An Experimental Study of the Impact of Client Information Type, Workload, and PCAOB Guidance on Dilution

Description: Many external parties such as investors, creditors, and regulatory agencies, use a company’s financial statements in their decision-making. In doing so, they rely on audit opinions on whether financial statements are fairly stated. However, evidence suggests that there are factors in the audit environment that influence auditor judgments. For example, nondiagnostic client information dilutes auditor judgments when compared to judgments based on diagnostic information alone, especially for less … more
Date: December 2015
Creator: Perry, Suzanne M.
open access

Regulation and Political Costs in the Oil and Gas Industry: An Investigation of Discretion in Reporting Earnings and Oil and Gas Reserves Estimates

Description: This study investigates the use of discretion by oil and gas companies in reporting financial performance and oil and gas reserve estimates during times of high political scrutiny resulting from increases in energy prices. Hypotheses tested in prior literature state that companies facing the risk of increasing taxes or new regulations reduce reported earnings to reduce this risk. This study uses a measure of high profitability (rank order of return on assets relative to industry peers) to ident… more
Date: August 2010
Creator: Kurdi, Ammr
open access

Stable Book-Tax Differences, Prior Earnings and Earnings Persistence

Description: This study resolves divergent prior findings relating book-tax differences to future earnings, determines whether prior literature has missed relationships between different types of book-tax differences and pre-tax and/or after-tax income, and investigates prior earnings as a factor contributing to the observed relationships. As past research has found that some firms have large book-tax differences over several years, this study separates these firms with large stable book-tax differences fro… more
Date: August 2011
Creator: Racca, Joshua C.
open access

A Study of Firm Location to Examine Disclosures and Governance Using a Dual Approach: Quantitative Analysis Based Upon the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and Qualitative Analysis of the Annual Report’s Management Discussion and Analysis

Description: The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the effect of U.S. firms’ geographic location, whether urban or rural, on their corporate disclosure and governance practices. An “urban” firm is one that is headquartered in a large metropolitan area; whereas, a “rural” firm is one that is headquartered some distance from any metropolitan area. Specifically, the study examines whether there are different stock market reactions to urban and rural firms around key event dates relative to the ena… more
Date: May 2015
Creator: Garner, Steve A.
open access

Tax Compliance in a Social Setting: the Influence of Norms, Perceptions of Fairness, and Trust in Government on Taxpayer Compliance

Description: Many taxing authorities, including those in the United States (U.S.), rely on voluntary tax compliance and continually search for ways to increase tax revenues. Most of these methods are costly and labor intensive, such as audits and penalties for noncompliance. Prior tax compliance research has heavily investigated the influence that economic factors, such as tax rates and penalties, have on individual compliance intentions. However, economic models fail to fully predict individual tax complia… more
Date: August 2013
Creator: Jimenez, Peggy D.
open access

What Did the Client Say? Auditor Memory of a Client Inquiry: a Study of Encoding Style and Note Taking

Description: Client inquiry is a fundamental procedure for gathering audit evidence. Since inquiries are not audio- or video-recorded in practice, auditor memory is vital to the accuracy of evidence gathered in this manner. Due to the potential for error during memory encoding and retrieval, the effect of memory on judgment, and the cognitive complexity of conducting a face-to-face inquiry, examining factors affecting auditor memory of client inquiries is important. In this dissertation, I examine two facto… more
Date: May 2015
Creator: Vinson, Jeremy M.
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