Audit firm industry specialization and audit outcomes: Insights from academic literature

Ahsan Habib

Research in Accounting Regulation, 2011, vol. 23, issue 2, 114-129

Abstract: Audit firms vary with respect to the quality of services they provide to their clients. One differentiation strategy is related to providing services to clients that are based on in-depth industry knowledge. Industry specialization helps audit firms increase the demand for audit and non-audit services, improves audit efficiency through economies of scale, creates barriers to entry by requiring new entrants to invest significant resources in relevant industries, and affects client-relevant audit outcomes like audit fees and financial reporting quality. This review attempts to evaluate critically the archival research on the effect of audit firm industry specialization on client-relevant audit outcomes. Some suggestions for future research are offered.

Keywords: Industry specialization; Audit fees; Financial reporting quality; SOX (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1052045711000373
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:reacre:v:23:y:2011:i:2:p:114-129

DOI: 10.1016/j.racreg.2011.06.008

Access Statistics for this article

Research in Accounting Regulation is currently edited by G. Previts

More articles in Research in Accounting Regulation from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().