Big Five Audits and Accounting Fraud*
研究1981至2001年间美国上市公司中，五大会计师事务所审计与会计舞弊发生率的关系，发现五大审计显著降低舞弊概率，且这种关系具有因果性。
We examine the association between Big Five audits and the incidence of accounting frauds allegedly committed by U.S. public companies between 1981 and 2001. Many commentators argue that the prominent financial reporting failures that led to major corporate governance reforms cast serious doubt on whether the large public accounting firms continue to supply relatively high-quality audits, especially in recent years. However, in unmatched and matched samples, we provide strong, robust evidence that fraudulent financial reporting becomes less likely with the presence of a Big Five auditor. Importantly, time-series tests suggest that the Big Five are consistently associated with a lower incidence of fraudulent accounting, including in the last five years of our sample period when the number of frauds soared. Moreover, we find evidence implying that these relations are causal rather than an artifact of endogeneity in auditor choice.