Foreign labor and audit quality: Evidence from newly hired H‐1B visa holders
研究发现，会计师事务所雇佣更多新外国员工（H-1B签证持有者）能提高审计质量，表现为客户的可操纵应计利润绝对值更低、重述率更小，且该效应在资源紧张或需外国专长的审计办公室更明显。
Abstract Foreign workers have been an important part of the labor force in public accounting firms over the past two decades. In this paper, we investigate whether and why foreign workers influence audit quality. We find that audit offices with more newly hired foreign labor have a lower mean absolute value of discretionary accruals and a smaller rate of restatements for their clients. The effect is more pronounced for audit offices that face more resource constraints or require greater foreign expertise. The results of improved audit quality are robust to alternative measures of immigrant intensity and audit quality, alternative samples, and using different ways to address endogeneity concerns. Overall, our paper contributes to the literature by showing the impact of foreign labor in the auditing profession and provides public policy implications for the recent H‐1B visa debate.