This section discusses studies that investigate a variety of engagement-specific characteristics that regulators perceive as threats to audit quality, but that are not included in SOX.
These include studies on the audit quality implications of long auditor tenure,opinion shopping, low-balling, client importance, and market structure.
These perceived threats have been the focus of regulatory scrutiny for decades and may well appear in future regulation.
We organize this section based on whether the potential intervention targets the client's demand for, or the auditor's supply of, audit quality.