Big 4 Office Size and Audit Quality
利用2003-2005年美国上市公司数据，发现四大会计师事务所的较大办公室因经验更丰富而提供更高质量审计，更可能出具持续经营意见，且客户盈余管理行为更少。
ABSTRACT: Larger offices of Big 4 auditors are predicted to have higher quality audits for SEC registrants due to greater in-house experience in administering such audits. We test this prediction by examining a sample of 6,568 U.S. firm-year observations for the period 2003–2005 and audited by 285 unique Big 4 offices. Results are consistent with larger offices providing higher quality audits. Specifically, larger offices are more likely to issue going-concern audit reports, and clients in larger offices evidence less aggressive earnings management behavior. These findings are robust to extensive controls for client risk factors and to controls for other auditor characteristics. While the evidence suggests audit quality is higher on average in larger Big 4 offices, we make no claims that audit quality is unacceptably low in smaller offices.