Authors:

  • Abigail Allen
  • Karthik Ramanna

Excerpt

The Auditing Oligopoly and Lobbying on Accounting Standards. Karthik Ramanna, Abigail M. Allen, August 19, 2013, Paper. "We examine how the tightening of the U.S. auditing oligopoly over the last twenty-five years — from the Big 8 to the Big 6, the Big 5, and, then, the Big 4 — has affected the incentives of the Big N, as manifest in their lobbying preferences on accounting standards. We find, as the oligopoly has tightened, Big N auditors are more likely to express concerns about decreased “reliability” in FASB-proposed accounting standards (relative to an independent benchmark); this finding is robust to controls for various alternative..." Link verified March 28, 2014