IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/aosoci/v98y2022ics036136822100088x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An investigation of the market's pricing of auditor competence: Evidence from PwC's Oscars blunder

Author

Listed:
  • Abbott, Lawrence J.
  • Buslepp, William L.

Abstract

On Sunday, February 26, 2017, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) erred on live television when Brian Cullinan, PwC's U.S. Board Chairman and Managing Partner of PwC's Southwest region, handed the announcers the wrong envelope for Best Picture at the 2017 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Awards Ceremony (hereafter, the Oscars). Cullinan's blunder represented a clear lack of competence in a non-audit service (NAS) context. Building on prior brand extension research, we hypothesize that market participants transfer their assessment of Cullinan's Oscars ceremony (i.e., NAS) incompetence to the financial statement audit competence of PwC's publicly traded audit clients. Consistent with this prediction, we find that abnormal returns in the days following the error are significantly lower for PwC clients in the region Cullinan managed, suggesting an impaired reputation for audit quality. However, losses experienced by PwC clients were restored within a month after the blunder, suggesting the durability of PwC's reputation in overcoming the initial impairment. Taken together, our evidence suggests that investors find the disclosure of audit partner identity to be informative.

Suggested Citation

  • Abbott, Lawrence J. & Buslepp, William L., 2022. "An investigation of the market's pricing of auditor competence: Evidence from PwC's Oscars blunder," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:aosoci:v:98:y:2022:i:c:s036136822100088x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.aos.2021.101310
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036136822100088X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.aos.2021.101310?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joseph Weber & Michael Willenborg & Jieying Zhang, 2008. "Does Auditor Reputation Matter? The Case of KPMG Germany and ComROAD AG," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(4), pages 941-972, September.
    2. Fama, Eugene F & French, Kenneth R, 1992. "The Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(2), pages 427-465, June.
    3. Bernard, Vl, 1987. "Cross-Sectional Dependence And Problems In Inference In Market-Based Accounting Research," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(1), pages 1-48.
    4. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    5. Zmijewski, Me, 1984. "Methodological Issues Related To The Estimation Of Financial Distress Prediction Models," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22, pages 59-82.
    6. Paul K. Chaney & Kirk L. Philipich, 2002. "Shredded Reputation: The Cost of Audit Failure," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(4), pages 1221-1245, September.
    7. Brad M. Barber & Terrance Odean, 2008. "All That Glitters: The Effect of Attention and News on the Buying Behavior of Individual and Institutional Investors," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(2), pages 785-818, April.
    8. Nelson, Karen K. & Price, Richard A. & Rountree, Brian R., 2008. "The market reaction to Arthur Andersen's role in the Enron scandal: Loss of reputation or confounding effects?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2-3), pages 279-293, December.
    9. Magdy S. Farag & Rafik Z. Elias, 2016. "The relationship between accounting students’ personality, professional skepticism and anticipatory socialization," Accounting Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(2), pages 124-138, April.
    10. Michael S. Drake & Darren T. Roulstone & Jacob R. Thornock, 2015. "The Determinants and Consequences of Information Acquisition via EDGAR," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 32(3), pages 1128-1161, September.
    11. Srinivasan Krishnamurthy & Jian Zhou & Nan Zhou, 2006. "Auditor Reputation, Auditor Independence, and the Stock†Market Impact of Andersen's Indictment on Its Client Firms," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 23(2), pages 465-490, June.
    12. Hughlene Burton & Brian Daugherty & Denise Dickins & Dan Schisler, 2016. "Dominant personality types in public accounting: selection bias or indoctrinated?," Accounting Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(2), pages 167-184, April.
    13. Marcus M. Doxey & James G. Lawson & Thomas J. Lopez & Quinn T. Swanquist, 2021. "Do Investors Care Who Did the Audit? Evidence from Form AP," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(5), pages 1741-1782, December.
    14. DeAngelo, Linda Elizabeth, 1981. "Auditor size and audit quality," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 183-199, December.
    15. W. Robert Knechel & Ann Vanstraelen & Mikko Zerni, 2015. "Does the Identity of Engagement Partners Matter? An Analysis of Audit Partner Reporting Decisions," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 32(4), pages 1443-1478, December.
    16. Sefcik, Se & Thompson, R, 1986. "An Approach To Statistical-Inference In Cross-Sectional Models With Security Abnormal Returns As Dependent Variable," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(2), pages 316-334.
    17. DeFond, Mark & Zhang, Jieying, 2014. "A review of archival auditing research," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 275-326.
    18. Chapman, Kimball, 2018. "Earnings notifications, investor attention, and the earnings announcement premium," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 222-243.
    19. Schipper, K & Thompson, R, 1983. "The Impact Of Merger-Related Regulations On The Shareholders Of Acquiring Firms," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(1), pages 184-221.
    20. Carol Callaway Dee & Ayalew Lulseged & Tianming Zhang, 2011. "Client Stock Market Reaction to PCAOB Sanctions Against a Big 4 Auditor," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(1), pages 263-291, March.
    21. Hope, Ole-Kristian & Wang, Jingjing, 2018. "Management deception, big-bath accounting, and information asymmetry: Evidence from linguistic analysis," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 33-51.
    22. Ekkehart Boehmer & Eric K. Kelley, 2009. "Institutional Investors and the Informational Efficiency of Prices," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(9), pages 3563-3594, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Friedrich, Christian & Quick, Reiner, 2024. "Do non-audit service failures impair auditor reputation? An analysis of KPMG advisory service scandals in Germany," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kam-Wah Lai & Ferdinand A. Gul, 2021. "Do failed auditors receive lower audit fees from continuing engagements?," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 56(3), pages 1159-1190, April.
    2. Incardona, John & Kannan, Yezen & Premuroso, Ronald & Higgs, Julia L. & Huang, Ivy, 2014. "Taxing audit markets and reputation: An examination of the U.S. tax shelter controversy," Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 18-31.
    3. Anna Bergman Brown & Nicole M. Heron & Hagit Levy & Emanuel Zur, 2023. "StoneRidge Investment Partners v. Scientific Atlanta: A Test of Auditor Litigation Risk," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 187(3), pages 517-538, October.
    4. Joseph Weber & Michael Willenborg & Jieying Zhang, 2008. "Does Auditor Reputation Matter? The Case of KPMG Germany and ComROAD AG," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(4), pages 941-972, September.
    5. El Ghoul, Sadok & Guedhami, Omrane & Pittman, Jeffrey, 2016. "Cross-country evidence on the importance of Big Four auditors to equity pricing: The mediating role of legal institutions," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 60-81.
    6. Knechel, W. Robert & Thomas, Edward & Driskill, Matthew, 2020. "Understanding financial auditing from a service perspective," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    7. Nathan R. Berglund, 2020. "Do Client Bankruptcies Preceded by Clean Audit Opinions Damage Auditor Reputation?," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(3), pages 1914-1951, September.
    8. Asare, Stephen K. & van Brenk, Herman & Demek, Kristina C., 2024. "Evidence on the homogeneity of personality traits within the auditing profession," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    9. Friedrich, Christian & Quick, Reiner, 2024. "Do non-audit service failures impair auditor reputation? An analysis of KPMG advisory service scandals in Germany," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    10. Nelson, Karen K. & Price, Richard A. & Rountree, Brian R., 2008. "The market reaction to Arthur Andersen's role in the Enron scandal: Loss of reputation or confounding effects?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2-3), pages 279-293, December.
    11. Clive S. Lennox & Asad Kausar, 2017. "Estimation risk and auditor conservatism," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 185-216, March.
    12. Ahmad, Fawad & Oriani, Raffaele, 2022. "Investor attention, information acquisition, and value premium: A mispricing perspective," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    13. Xianjie He & Jeffrey Pittman & Oliver Rui, 2016. "Reputational Implications for Partners After a Major Audit Failure: Evidence from China," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 138(4), pages 703-722, November.
    14. Chou, Julia & Zaiats, Nataliya & Zhang, Bohui, 2014. "Does auditor choice matter to foreign investors? Evidence from foreign mutual funds worldwide," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 1-20.
    15. Frendy, & Hu, Dan, 2014. "Japanese stock market reaction to announcements of news affecting auditors’ reputation: The case of the Olympus fraud," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 206-224.
    16. Dee, Carol Callaway & Hillison, William & Pacini, Carl, 2010. "No news is bad news: Market reaction to reasons given for late filing of Form 10-K," Research in Accounting Regulation, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 121-127.
    17. Zhang, Ivy Xiying, 2007. "Economic consequences of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(1-2), pages 74-115, September.
    18. DeFond, Mark & Zhang, Jieying, 2014. "A review of archival auditing research," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 275-326.
    19. Christiane Goodfellow & Dirk Schiereck & Steffen Wippler, 2013. "Are behavioural finance equity funds a superior investment? A note on fund performance and market efficiency," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 14(2), pages 111-119, April.
    20. Turan G. Bali & Robert F. Engle & Yi Tang, 2017. "Dynamic Conditional Beta Is Alive and Well in the Cross Section of Daily Stock Returns," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(11), pages 3760-3779, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Audit quality; Auditor competence; Audit partner identification;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M42 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Auditing

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:aosoci:v:98:y:2022:i:c:s036136822100088x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/aos .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.