Essays on Audit Regulation and Audit Market Competition

In this doctoral dissertation, I investigate the impact of audit regulation on audit market competition. Specifically, I focus on two major regulations, namely the Audit Reform in the EU and Accounting Associations and Networks (AAN) in the US. The Audit Reform was introduced in the EU in 2014 as a response to the financial crisis of 2008 and it contains measures which are binding for the member states. Regarding the Audit Reform, I focus on the impact of mandatory firm rotation on price competition for new audit engagements and the (un)intended consequences of the audit reform. On the other side, AAN are suggested by regulators as a solution to help small audit firms remove the barriers of auditing large public companies. While membership in AAN is beneficial, in this dissertation I focus on the challenges of collaborating with competitors. .