We examine the relation between the gender composition of audit teams and two important audit outcomes—audit quality and audit fees. We identify gender composition across auditor ranks with novel audit-office level data for 20 large U.S. public accounting firms from 2010 to 2018. We find engagements of audit offices with more female auditors are associated with higher audit quality and lower audit fees. We find the association between gender composition and audit outcomes is strongest at the staff level, and among audit seniors in particular. The results also strengthen in offices with more supportive workplace environments. Overall, our large-scale evidence provides important insights on the role of gender composition of audit teams.

The PCAOB posits that audit partner and manager involvement, primarily through greater supervision and review (“oversight”) of audit engagements, is an important determinant and indicator of audit quality. We test this notion by empirically examining the link between staffing leverage, as measured by an office's ratio of audit partners and managers to audit employees, and audit outcomes from 2008 to 2022. We find staffing leverage is associated with lower rates of client misstatements, comment letters, and PCAOB inspection deficiencies, suggesting higher audit quality. When disaggregated, the association pertains to both partners and nonpartner managers. This relation is stronger for more complex clients and for offices with better management. We also find that staffing leverage measured at the firm level predicts audit quality, and that both office‐ and firm‐level staffing leverage are incrementally informative of audit quality, suggesting disclosing audit oversight metrics at multiple levels could be beneficial. However, the association between firm‐level staffing leverage and audit quality is statistically detected only within Big 4 audits. These findings suggest that audit committees, investors, and regulators can use audit‐office partner‐staffing and manager‐staffing leverage as an informative indicator of audit quality, particularly for complex engagements.