Prior research concludes that tax-expert auditors facilitate tax aggressiveness. However, these studies examine auditors who also provide non-audit tax services to their clients, creating conflicting incentives. We predict that tax-expert auditors, who do not provide non-audit tax services, reduce tax aggressiveness, because tax aggressiveness imposes costs on them. We test our prediction using Chinese data, allowing us to identify Certified Tax Agents as tax-expert auditors. We find that companies are less tax aggressive when their signatory auditor is a tax-expert who does not provide non-audit tax services. Consistent with a causal relation, a decrease in tax rates, which reduces clients’ incentives to be tax aggressive, weakens the effect of tax-expertise on tax aggressiveness. Moreover, tax-expert auditors attenuate the type of tax aggressiveness that results in tax-related misstatements. Overall, by examining auditors who do not provide non-audit tax services, we find that tax-expert auditors curb tax aggressiveness, contrary to prior research.

Managers often overreact to revenue fluctuations, leading to unnecessary workforce adjustments and increased training costs. This study examines how board governance influences firms’ employment sensitivity to revenue fluctuations. Analyzing global board reforms, we find that board reforms significantly reduce managerial overreaction to revenue fluctuations. Utilizing recent difference-in-differences estimators that address heterogeneous treatment effects, we ensure the robustness of our results. The reduction in employment sensitivity is more pronounced when board reforms strengthen the independence of boards and audit committees, particularly in jurisdictions with weaker board efficacy, shareholder, and employment protection legislation. Enhanced effects are observed in firms with initially lower board independence and rapid reform compliance, in entities experiencing greater information asymmetry, marked by higher labor intensity, higher pre-reform agency costs and financial constraints, and in firms led by less experienced CEOs or boards with higher male representation.