FAR Literature Review - Audit Production
Production is the process by which inputs are transformed into outputs through factors of production. In the case of an audit, audit effort (labor and time) is expended to produce assurance over client financial statements (O’Keefe, Simunic, and Stein 1994). As is typical for services, labor is the most important factor in the production of audits. Although audit production is crucial to understanding the economics of auditing, the literature on audit production is sparse due to the difficulty of observing and measuring the factors of production. Specifically, the lack of access to internal audit firm information makes it difficult for researchers to observe and measure production inputs. Moreover, the credence good nature of an audit makes it difficult to observe audit output (i.e., the level of assurance).
Authors
Associate Professor of Business Administration Tuck School of business
Ulrike joined the School of Accounting at UNSW Sydney in August 2020. Prior to that, she completed her PhD in Auditing at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. Ulrike's research centers around audit quality. She is interested in how inputs to the audit, the audit process and contextual factors affect audit production and audit quality. Specifically, her research investigates the quality of group audits, the effectiveness of public oversight and auditor's incentives from regulation and litigation.