ABSTRACT Auditors frequently use valuation specialists to help them evaluate fair values, but researchers and regulators know little about how auditors use these specialists. Based on interviews with 28 auditors and 14 valuation specialists, I develop a theoretical framework informed by expert systems and professional competition theories. The interviews suggest that institutional pressures in the fair value environment unevenly impact auditors and specialists, causing tension between auditors' needs for ontological security and jurisdictional claims. This tension leads to one‐sided competition between auditors and specialists and incomplete acceptance of specialists' work. Auditors' competitive behaviors coupled with this incomplete acceptance result in a tendency to make specialists' work conform to auditors' views. Collectively, these findings suggest that auditors use specialists as an institutional mechanism to create comfort, but not insight. This study links expert systems and professional competition theories, and it provides critical insight into some assumptions underlying tenets of each theory. It also informs researchers, regulators, and practitioners interested in understanding and addressing problems related to the use of specialists.

Firms affiliated with business groups survive the stress of the global financial and euro crises better than unaffiliated firms. Using granular data from Italy, we show that better performance stems partly from access to an internal capital market, as the survival value of group-affiliated firms increases with group-wide cash flow. Internal cash transfers increase when banks’ health deteriorates, with funds moving from cash-rich to cash-poor firms and, some evidence suggests, to firms with favorable investment opportunities. Internal capital markets’ role thus increases when external markets (banks) are distressed.

We examine post-IPO exits of private equity sponsors of portfolio firms via follow-on secondary equity offerings and third party takeovers. Sponsors retain considerable ownership in listed portfolio firms for lengthy periods after IPOs, well beyond lockup expiration. After private equity post-IPO secondary offerings, corporate profitability is strongly superior to benchmark firms, indicating portfolio firms are successfully prepared for private equity's subsequent exit. Nevertheless, share prices fall at offering announcements, reflecting the failure of private equity sponsors to exit stakes in listed entities at the high premiums paid in third party takeovers, premiums that are invariably shared equally with public shareholders.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the US Gulf Coast in 2005. We use job-level data to compare the evolution of earnings for affected workers in four states with workers from matched control counties. We attribute short-term earnings losses to job separations and long-term gains to wage growth in the affected areas. Wages rose due to reduced labor supply and increased labor demand in the affected labor markets. Damage to a worker’s residence or workplace accentuated short-term earnings losses. Effects varied by prestorm industry, with larger gains for workers in sectors related to rebuilding.

We show how a venture capital firm's fundraising is affected by its investment choices. We investigate three leading indicators that are calculated from the types of investments the venture capital firms make: style drift investments, follow-on investments, and investments in which the venture capital firm is not the lead investor in the portfolio company. We find that these investment characteristics are associated with lower fundraising. Characteristics and the reaction of fundraising to characteristics are both moderately stable through time. We also find some evidence that information about investment characteristics is more important for fundraising during bad states of the world and that ex-ante characteristics are related to eventual exit outcomes and financial performance.

We use director elections to analyze outsider shareholder perspectives of agency problems in family firms. Compared to nonfamily firms, outsider shareholders in family firms provide weaker support for director slates proposed by the firms’ nominating committees. Outside shareholder support decreases when families receive private benefits of control, when family members serve in leadership roles, or when family members serve on board monitoring committees. We do not find similar results for other actively engaged concentrated owners. Our results provide new insights into outsider shareholders’ satisfaction with family control in publicly held firms and their perceptions of the family-outsider agency conflicts.

Firms with lower leverage are not only less likely to experience financial distress but are also better positioned to acquire assets from other distressed firms. With endogenous asset sales and values, each firm’s debt choice then depends on the choices of its industry peers. With indivisible assets, otherwise-identical firms may adopt different debt policies, with some choosing highly levered operations (to take advantage of ongoing debt benefits) and others choosing more conservative policies to wait for acquisition opportunities. Our key empirical implication is that the acquisition channel can induce firms to reduce debt when assets become more redeployable.

ABSTRACT We examine the use of intuition versus analytical thinking in auditor risk assessment using a task that requires auditors to assess a group of impairment indicators. We expect that auditor intuition, rooted in the subconscious, more likely reacts to impairment indicator risk than does auditor analytical thinking. Results from two different experiments support this expectation for less‐experienced audit seniors. These seniors are more likely to assess step‐zero impairment indicators as signaling potential impairment when prompted to think intuitively versus analytically . In contrast, a third experiment finds that experienced seniors are more likely to assess step‐zero impairment indicators as signaling potential impairment when prompted to think analytically versus intuitively . This is consistent with the more experienced but still non‐expert seniors possessing developed analytical thinking, but struggling to effectively use their intuition. Our results inform theory by suggesting under what conditions auditor intuition and analytical thinking produce differential risk sensitivity. Furthermore, our results inform practice, given regulators' stated focus on auditor skepticism and impairment assessments.

Junior auditors collect the bulk of audit evidence, yet they do not always speak up to communicate potentially important audit issues. Such inappropriate “voice” decisions can endanger audit quality. We examine whether and how staff auditors influence each other in making voice decisions. First, a survey provides descriptive evidence that staff auditors consult their peers for advice on whether to speak up. Next, two experiments provide evidence that voice advice among peers at the staff level can be problematic. We find that staff auditors consistently underestimate the importance of raising issues compared to their supervisors, and they rely on social cues that are not diagnostic of issue importance in giving voice advice to peers. Finally, we predict and find that staff auditors tend to follow peer advice when it confirms their initial stance, and that an expectation of high (versus low) quality supervisor feedback increases their willingness to speak up. Most importantly, we find that contradictory peer advice only influences staff auditors’ willingness to speak up when leadership feedback is not expected to be of high quality. Together these results indicate that staff auditors seek out and follow voice advice from their peers, but appropriate leadership feedback practices can mitigate the negative impact of peer advice on upward communication.