The Impacts of Competition in the Audit Market on Audit Fees and Audit Quality

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effects of competition in the audit market on both audit quality and audit fees. Using data from public companies provided by Audit Analytics and Compustat I conduct an empirical analysis of the effects of the Herfindahl index, calculated with data from the National Establishment Time Series database, and relevant controls on audit fees and audit quality using restatements as a proxy for quality. The empirical analysis suggests that competition has statistically insignificant effects on audit quality when evaluated at a county level, but on a zip code level finds that increased competition results in lower audit quality and increased competition lowers audit fees on both the zip code and county levels