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There is an increased emphasis on internal control in the governmental sector. We compare finance officer assessments of internal control to auditor assessments for a sample of Michigan municipalities. On average, the finance officers' assessments of their control systems were more favorable than the assessments made by auditors from a regional CPA firm with a large governmental practice, suggesting that auditor reports on internal control may result in a more conservative evaluation of the control system than reports provided by management. One measure of the effectiveness of the internal control system is its ability to prevent errors. We compare the finance officer and auditor assessments of internal control to the number of audit adjustments as an objective measure of the accuracy of the control assessments. The internal control assessments made by auditors were significantly more highly correlated with the number of audit adjustments than those made by finance officers. This suggests that the accuracy of internal control reports may be improved if the reports are prepared by auditors.

The implementation of compliance procedures associated with the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act of 2002 came at a great cost to most publicly‐traded firms, largely due to the internal control disclosures required by Section 404 of the Act. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the inquiry on internal control effectiveness by examining the impact of the type (same or different) and number of internal control weaknesses on audit fees. The paper also examines whether firms that remediate continue to incur higher audit fees compared to firms that never disclosed a weakness.

The authors evaluate the impact of internal control weaknesses and their remediation on audit fees using ordinary least squares regression for 9,122 firm year observations (3,096 unique firms) over the time period 2004‐2007.

The authors find: an incremental impact on audit fees of additional material weakness disclosures; firms that report the same material weakness pay higher fees than firms reporting a different material weakness in consecutive years; and audit fees remain high one, two, and three years following remediation compared to a firm that never disclosed an internal control weakness.

In contrast with prior studies, the sample includes firms that remediated weaknesses, firms that failed to remediate weaknesses, and firms that did not have prior weaknesses. The results suggest that the failure to remediate has greater risk implications than new weaknesses and that material weaknesses are associated with higher audit fees several years after remediation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of certain audit quality attributes, namely auditor size, auditor industry specialization and auditor tenure on a client firm's cost of equity capital.

The paper uses empirical data to construct a measure of ex ante cost of equity capital for each firm and year using analyst forecasts. Independent audit quality measures used are auditor size, auditor industry specialization and auditor tenure. Firm cost of equity capital is regressed against the three independent variables and appropriate control variables.

The paper finds that auditor size (auditor is a member of the BigX), auditor industry specialization and auditor tenure are negatively associated with the client firm's cost of equity capital. However, the paper finds that this effect is limited only to small client firms, potentially reflecting the poor information environment associated with such firms.

The study highlights the importance of audit quality attributes in determining the firm's cost of capital. It also highlights ways in which firms (especially small firms) can reduce the cost of equity capital by improving their information environment through the judicious selection of auditors.

This is believed to be the first paper to examine whether the effects of three audit quality attributes (auditor size, auditor industry specialization and auditor tenure) on a firm's cost of capital are dependent on the client's size. The paper empirically shows that such effects are more pronounced for smaller clients.

Accounting researchers have performed many studies related to public sector budgeting and financial management. Public sector accounting research seeks to explain the role of accounting and auditing in the public sector. For example, researchers examine issues such as (1) the use of accounting information by elected officials, (2) the demand for auditing, and (3) the determination of bond ratings. This review of the public sector accounting literature describes some of the theoretical foundations utilized in public sector accounting research and reviews a sample of selected empirical studies.

This introductory article to the special symposium entitled “The Evolution of Governmental and Nonprofit Accounting Education” introduces the five symposium articles that follow. The article also presents information to assist governmental and nonprofit educators in business schools and public administration educators in other colleges within a university in making comparisons between their perspectives and approaches. The authors’ view as accounting professors is that students in both disciplines develop stronger competencies for success in the public sector when their programs integrate context and techniques that come from using alternative instructional approaches and a diverse set of resources.

This study provides public administrators with an introduction into research of the determinants of audit fees. A working knowledge of external audit cost determinants can help public administrators hone their evaluation skills for use in audit-procurement. Most prior research on audit cost determinants has focused on the few hundred cities in the nation with populations exceeding 50,000. As a result, this study investigated the audit costs incurred by small cities with populations less than 50,000.

Besides providing a glimpse of small-city auditing practices, the study tested the significance of the Single Audit Act in audit-fee determination. Missouri municipalities with populations between 2,000 and 50,000 provided the sample for the study. Because Missouri is one of the few states in the nation that neither legislates nor monitors municipal auditing, it represents an unregulated audit market in which town officials decide on the need for an audit, the firm to conduct the audit, and the process by which the audit firm is selected. The results of a nine-variable regression model suggested that the size of the town, the existence of a city administrator, the complexity of the town's operation, the method of accounting, the timing and completion time of the audit, and audit-firm specialization in municipal auditing were important determinants of audit fees.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a deeper understanding about the reasons behind difference in previous studies’ results in the field of audit quality determinants.

A meta-analysis method is employed in which 52 studies including 40 international studies from authentic scientific articles during the year 2000–2015 and 12 national studies out of authentic national scientific articles from 2001 to 2015 are taken to account as sample studies. Audit firm size, auditor tenure and auditor specialization are set as independent variables and audit quality is the only dependent variable in the current paper.

The results indicate that audit firm size and auditor specialization are positively associated with audit quality. In other words, contracting with larger audit firm and specialized auditor results in delivering higher quality audit services.

The current study is the first study to be conducted in the field of audit quality determinants. The results may be beneficial both for standard setters as well practitioners in a way that it provides evidence that contributes to basis policy and audit-standard makers about domination and determinants of audit quality.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of housing with care schemes to act as community hubs. The analysis highlights a range of benefits, barriers and facilitators.

Data are presented from the Adult Social Services Environments and Settings project which used a mixed methods approach including a review of the literature, surveys and in-depth case study interviews.

Most housing with care schemes have a restaurant or café, communal lounge, garden, hairdresser, activity room and laundrette, while many also have a library, gym, computer access and a shop. Many of these facilities are open not just to residents but also to the wider community, reflecting a more integrated approach to community health and adult social care, by sharing access to primary health care and social services between people living in the scheme and those living nearby. Potential benefits of this approach include the integration of older people’s housing, reduced isolation and increased cost effectiveness of local services through economies of scale and by maximising preventative approaches to health and wellbeing. Successful implementation of the model depends on a range of criteria including being located within or close to a residential area and having on-site facilities that are accessible to the public.

This paper is part of a very new literature on community hub models of housing with care in the UK. In the light of new requirements under the Care Act to better coordinate community services, it provides insights into how this approach can work and offers an analysis of the benefits and challenges that will be of interest to commissioners and providers as well as planners. This was a small scale research project based on four case studies. Caution should be taken when considering the findings in different settings.

This study aims to show how the increasingly popular life course paradigm (LCP) can be employed as an alternative to the successful aging perspective (SAP) as an overarching conceptual research framework to study elderly consumers' financial well-being.

A questionnaire was administered to a convenience sample of 804 Thai consumers over the age of 45 selected via the snowball method.

Significant results were found for hypotheses derived from the LCP for older consumers' financial well-being, suggesting critical roles of early life experiences, developmental factors, adaptation mechanisms and contextual factors.

This paper shows how efforts to study consumers over the course of their lives can be improved by utilizing the principles and theoretical perspectives of the LCP and offers research directions for studying not only older consumer well-being but also numerous consumer behavior issues at any stage of life in an innovative way.

This paper explores the evidence on risk and vulnerability to depression of older people, looking at the complex interplay between physical ill health, disability, loss of intimates and social relationships, loneliness and depression, and the resources and protective factors at individual, social and community level that either buffer risk or promote psychological well‐being. It concludes, with Blazer (2000), that effective strategies for the prevention, treatment and management of depression must ‘proceed across multiple domains simultaneously’, and address social, environmental and economic as well as medico‐biological factors if interventions are to prove effective in this greatly neglected field. Action at government level to address social inequalities throughout the life course would also have a significant protective impact on mental well‐being in old age.