Auditors

Abigail Brown's primary project at the Lab is to write a book, using archival firm evidence and other historical methods, to trace the development of the financial statement auditing profession into an entity that could fairly be describes as one suffering from institutional corruption. Parallel to the main book project, she is writing a series of economic articles that develop rigorously the theory that provides the foundation for the book's analysis of qualitative data. She has completed two working papers: one on optimal contracting for auditors and management under conditions that fit that of a public company and one on the conditions under which auditors will agree to collude in both single-period and on-going relationships. Building on the results derived in these papers, she is currently working on a paper that looks at the interaction between reputation and oligopolistic market structure for industries that trade on reputation, such as auditing and credit rating. She is also testing the signaling hypothesis explaining voluntary audits with data from the 1920s. In addition, she is writing a paper with co-author Jacob Klerman on the parallels between the challenges auditors face in remaining independent and those of contractors evaluating the success of government programs.

Attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joanet/3484657288/