Did the 2005 Deferred Prosecution Agreement Adversely Impact KPMG's Audit Practice?
研究了毕马威因推销问题避税方案被暂缓起诉后，其审计业务是否遭受客户流失、费用下降或审计质量下滑，发现几乎没有负面影响。
SUMMARY We examine the consequences of misconduct in a Big 4 firm's nonaudit practice for its audit practice. Specifically, we examine whether KPMG's audit practice suffered a loss of audit fees and clients and/or a decline in factual audit quality following the 2005 deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) with the Department of Justice for marketing questionable tax shelters. We find little evidence that the DPA adversely impacted KPMG's audit practice by way of either audit fees or the likelihood of client gains/losses, suggesting little or no harm to KPMG's audit reputation. We also find that the DPA had no effect on the firm's factual audit quality, even for those audit clients that dropped KPMG as their tax service provider. Collectively, our findings suggest that there was no spillover effect from the DPA to KPMG's audit practice. Data Availability: All data are publicly available.