In this paper, I present a model in which both markets for audit services and nonaudit services (NAS) are oligopolistic. Accounting firms providing both audit services and NAS will employ oligopolistic competition in each of these markets. In addition to auditors' gaining “knowledge spillovers” from auditing to consulting or vice versa, oligopolistic competition in one market will influence the counterpart in the other market ‐ what I call “competition crossovers”. Although scope economies due to knowledge spillovers (for example, cost savings) are always beneficial to auditors, such benefits can entice accounting firms to adopt strategies (for example, price reductions) to compete aggressively in the audit market so that some, or all, firms become worse off. A trade‐off arises between these two economic forces in the two oligopolistic markets. Given the trade‐off between competition crossovers and knowledge spillovers, accounting firms may not reduce their audit prices, even though supplying NAS enables firms to decrease auditing costs — a nontrivial impact of oligopolistic competition in two markets on audit pricing. The empirical implication of my results is that because of competition‐crossover effects between the auditing and consulting service markets, finding empirical evidence for knowledge‐spillover benefits is likely to be difficult. Control variables for “audit‐market concentration” concerned with competition‐crossover effects and “auditor expertise” concerned with knowledge‐spillover benefits should be included in audit‐fee regressions to increase the power of empirical tests. With regard to policy implications, my analyses help explain the impact of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act on “market segmentation” and, hence, the profitability of accounting firms.

In this study, we present a nonstrategic, dynamic Bayesian model in which auditors' learning on the job and their choice of professional services jointly affect audit quality. While performing audits over time, auditors accumulate client‐specific knowledge so that their posterior beliefs about clients are updated and become more precise (that is, precision is our surrogate for audit quality) — what we call the learning effect. In addition, auditors can enrich their knowledge accumulation by performing nonaudit services (NAS) that, in fact, may influence clients' managerial decisions — what we call the business advisory effect. This advisory effect permits auditors to anticipate and to learn about changes in clients' business models, which in turn improves their advisory capacity. These dual “learning” and “advisory” effects are interdependent and mutually reinforcing. The advisory effect of NAS may increase or reduce auditors' engagement risk. We show that large professional fees can induce auditors to provide NAS that increase engagement risk and diminish audit quality. However, when NAS reduce engagement risk and increase audit quality, auditors may provide NAS without charging clients. The feature that distinguishes our study — the interdependence between the learning and advisory effects — provides new insight into the trade‐off between audit fees and audit quality. Consequently, our analysis helps explain why the scope of the audit has evolved over time and why the boundaries between audit and NAS are constantly shifting. A recent example of such a shift is that the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act adds control attestation to audits for public companies traded in U.S. markets.

This paper measures gender bias in discussions about women versus men in an online professional forum. I study the content of posts that refer to each gender and the transitions in the topics between consecutive posts once attention turns to one gender or the other. Discussions about women tend to emphasize their personal characteristics instead of professional accomplishments. Posts about women are also more likely to lead to deviations from professional topics than are posts about men. I interpret these findings through a model that highlights posters' incentives to boost their own identities relative to the underrepresented out-group in a profession.

We consider a setting in which a firm uses residual income to motivate a manager's investment decision. Textbooks often recommend adjusting the residual income capital charge for market risk, but not for firmspecific risk. We demonstrate two basic flaws in this recommendation. First, the capital charge should not be adjusted for market risk. Charging a market risk premium results in “double” counting because a risk-averse manager will personally consider this risk. Second, while investors can avoid firm-specific risk through diversification, a manager cannot. If the manager faces significant firm-specific risk at the time he makes his investment decision, then it is optimal to charge him less than the riskless return so as to partially offset his reluctance to undertake risky investments. On the other hand, the manager will vary his investment decisions with the pre-decision information he receives, which accentuates his compensation risk, and the firm must compensate him for bearing this additional risk. Hence, if the manager will receive relatively precise pre-decision information, then it is optimal to charge him more than the riskless return to reduce the variability of his investment decisions.