The auditing oligopoly and lobbying on accounting standards
By: Abigail Allen, Karthik Ramanna, Sugata Roychowdhury
Contributors: Ramanna, Karthik; Harvard Business School
Series: Working paper / Harvard Business School -- 13-054; Working paper (Harvard Business School) -- 13-054
Publisher: Harvard Business School
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Boston ]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 52
Description: We examine how the tightening of the U.S. auditing oligopoly over the last twenty-five years -- from the Big 8 to the Big 6, the Big 5, and, finally, the Big 4 -- has affected the incentives of the Big N, as manifest in their lobbying preferences on accounting standards. We find, as the oligopoly has tightened, Big N auditors are more likely to express concerns about decreased "reliability" in FASB-proposed accounting standards (relative to an independent benchmark); this finding is robust to controls for various alternative explanations. The results are consistent with the Big N auditors facing greater political and litigation costs attributable to their increased visibility from tightening oligopoly and with decreased competitive pressure among the Big N to satisfy client preferences (who usually demand accounting flexibility at the expense of reliability). The results are inconsistent with the claim that the Big N increasingly consider themselves "too big to fail" as the audit oligopoly tightens.
Notes: "December 2012" -- Publisher's website.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 37-38).