Thus, comparing measures at opposite ends of the “egregiousness” spectrum provides evidence on whether a particular
variable of interest has a large or a small effect on audit quality. Analogously, when actual quality measures suffer from
measurement problems or causality is in question, market-based measures such as the stock price reaction have the
potential to provide evidence that does not suffer from these problems. In contrast, within-category comparisons, such as
between DAC and meeting or beating benchmarks, do not confer the same benefits. In addition, within-category proxies are
more likely to have correlated biases as compared with proxies across categories.43