An Examination of Audit Quality Surrounding Within-Firm Engagement Office Changes
研究了美国事务所内部办公室变更对审计质量的影响，发现客户转移到较小办公室时审计质量下降，而转移到较大办公室时未见改善，且下降主要由接收办公室公共客户减少驱动，可能与知识转移摩擦有关。
We examine the relation between within-firm office changes and audit quality in the United States. Our primary analysis documents a reduction in audit quality, measured using abnormal discretionary accruals and restatements, when the client is transferred to a smaller within-firm office (downsize effect). We are unable to find evidence that clients experience significant improvement in audit quality among transfers to a larger within-firm office (upsize effect). We then condition our sample on the change in the number of public clients of the receiving office to better understand the source of the underlying association. We find that our downsize effect is driven by offices experiencing a decrease in the number of public clients, suggesting that our main association is not entirely the result of resource constraints for the receiving office. We posit that this finding is consistent with audit quality deterioration among within-firm office changes to smaller offices driven, in part, by the receiving office’s inability to adequately overcome the knowledge transfer frictions that accompany a move to a new office. Our findings offer empirical evidence on consequences of within-firm office changes and are particularly relevant to regulators and preparers.