Essays on the Audit Process

Abstract: Implementation of the audit process involves auditors’ judgments and decisions and is unique for each engagement. This book comprises four papers, investigating the factors that influence the audit process, which in turn leads to variations in audit and client corporate outcomes. The first paper in this book investigates whether auditors share industry leader clients’ information with non-leader clients in the audit process and whether such information sharing improves non-leader clients’ investment efficiency. The second paper explores the impact of auditor-client relationships based on auditor-Client CEO personality similarity on auditor-client alignment and auditor decision-making in the audit process. The third paper examines whether auditors’ experiences of client bankruptcy influence their conservatism and professional skepticism in their future audit engagements. The last paper of this book focuses on auditors’ materiality assessment in the adverse economic shocks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and explores whether macroeconomic conditions influence audit materiality judgment.