Auditor knowledge is a key element in explaining the supply of audit quality, yet understanding of the drivers of this knowledge in the archival literature is limited. This study uses an archival approach to examine whether the sharing of auditors among firms in banking relationships results in information transfers that improve audit quality. I find that audit quality improves for both borrowers and lenders who share the same auditor office. Specifically, lenders who share an auditor office with their borrowers have more accurate loan-loss provisions, especially lenders with smaller commercial loan portfolios. Borrowers who share an auditor office with their lender are less likely to receive a clean audit opinion just prior to bankruptcy. Overall, these findings are consistent with shared auditors in banking relationships developing client specific knowledge that is transferable across clients and industries.

Using GPS location data from customers’ mobile devices, we develop measures of customer shopping behavior intended to capture the likelihood that customers will shop again in the future, and we examine their associations with firms’ financial decisions and outcomes. We measure customers’ propensity to return using the frequency, distance, duration, and timing of their past visits to a firm’s retail locations. We find a positive association between customers’ propensity to return and the persistence of the firm’s revenues and earnings. We also find a positive association between customers’ propensity to return and the efficiency of investing and operating decisions among firms likely to incorporate customer data into their internal information systems. Our results illustrate conditions under which revenues and earnings are sustainable and when managerial decisions are consistent with insights provided by customer information. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.