Essays on the Implications of Accounting and Audit Regulations

In this dissertation, some questions relating to the implications of these developments, particularly regarding audit pricing, accounting quality, and auditors’ use of experts are examined. In the first essay, a bibliometric review of the literature is conducted to synthesize the academic research with a focus on insights about the impact of these regulatory and technological changes on audit fees. Given that audit fees is a function of audit effort, stakeholders including regulators, practitioners, and investors have been interested in understanding the impact of accounting and audit regulations on audit fees. Secondly, accounting quality is often cited as a major motivation for regulatory changes. The second study examines the impact of IFRS adoption approaches on accounting quality. Countries use different approaches to implement international accounting standards. Some adopt the standards without changes, others adopt with changes aimed at incorporating their local context into these standards. Although these two approaches are particularly common in Africa, questions about the impact of these approaches on accounting quality are yet to be empirically examined. The final study focuses on a recent development in the audit environment following the adoption of ISA 701: Communicating Key Audit Matters. This relatively new standard is a response to the longstanding criticism of the audit report. Users assert that the audit report is standardized and boilerplate thereby not providing client-specific information beyond the pass or fail opinion (B dard, Coram, Espahbodi, & Mock, 2016; Mock et al., 2012). The associated increased transparency has provided a rare insight into the internal working of audit firms, especially in relation to their use of experts in the most significant areas of the audit. Consequently, the study exploits this unique information to empirically examine the factors associated with auditors’ use of experts in an audit