A significant body of prior research has shown that audits by the Big 5
(now Big 4) public accounting firms are quality differentiated relative to non-Big 5 audits.
This result can be derived analytically by assuming that Big 5 and non-Big 5 firms
face different loss functions for ‘‘audit failures’’ and is consistent with a variety of empirical
evidence from studies of audit fees, auditor changes, and the stock price reaction
to audited earnings. However, there is no existing evidence (of which we are
aware) concerning the underlying production differences between Big 5 and non-Big 5
audits. As a result, existing empirical evidence cannot distinguish between the possibility
that Big 5 audits are simply perceived to be different (e.g., by investors) or actually
differ in how they are produced.