Essays on the Supply and Demand for Auditing Service

Abstract: The market for auditing service is shaped by the demand side and supply side forces. For audit firms and the overall profession, human capital is the most important asset because auditing service is delivered by auditors. The first paper in this book highlights the salience of leadership ability for auditors’ career success, and the second paper examines recent years’ trajectory of gender salary gap in the Swedish auditing profession. The demand for auditing service arises when owners are separated from managers of a firm. Due to the rapid rise of index funds in recent years, the ownership pattern of the stock market has changed greatly. The third paper in this book examines the impact of passive investors on audit quality. The fourth paper of this book focuses on regulatory intervention to the auditing market and examines the consequence of relaxing the mandatory audit requirement on small firms’ tax avoidance behaviour.