Using a difference-in-differences approach, we examine the effect of industry-specific knowledge transfer on audit performance after a merger of two Chinese audit firms with different levels of expertise in an industry. For clients in an industry audited by both merging audit firms, those audited by the audit firm less specialized in that industry belong to the treatment group, while all other clients belong to the control group. We find an economically significant improvement in audit quality (as reflected in a reduction in financial misstatements) for the treatment group relative to the control group in the same merged audit firm. We show the treatment effect is not driven by changes in auditor incentives or personnel movement and is more pronounced when we expect stronger communication between the less and more specialized auditors after the merger. We caution that our findings are specific to China and may not generalize to other countries. Data Availability: Data used in this study are available from public sources identified in the text.

We find that economic conditions at the time an auditor enters the labor market have a long-term impact on her judgment and decision making. Specifically, engagement partners who started their career during economic downturns issue audit adjustments more frequently. For the subsample of company-years with no audit adjustments, downturn auditors are more likely to issue a modified audit opinion. In addition, companies audited by downturn auditors are less likely to violate financial reporting and disclosure regulations. Together, our findings suggest that the early career stage is a critical formative period for auditors.

Using seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) from 1989 to 2008, we examine the role of accounting conservatism in the equity market. We find that issuers with a greater degree of conservatism experience fewer negative market reactions to SEO announcements. We further show that an important mechanism through which conservatism affects SEO announcement returns is by mitigating the negative impact of information asymmetry. Additional analyses suggest that our results are not driven by the effects of other forms of corporate governance. We also find evidence that conservative issuers continue to use conservative accounting after the equity offerings. Taken together, our findings are consistent with the argument that accounting conservatism reduces financing costs in SEOs. Data Availability: Data used in this study are available from public sources identified in the study.