We investigate the justifications provided by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) when sanctioning audit firms and individual auditors, as disclosed in the publicly released Settled Disciplinary Orders (SDOs). Employing responsive regulation theory, we seek to gain an understanding of violating behaviors by audit firms and individual auditors that attract regulatory responses ranging in nature from persuasive to punitive sanctions. Using 298 SDOs issued by the PCAOB from 2005 to 2020, we find that the frequency and severity of PCAOB sanctions at the firm level are positively associated with auditing standards violations, independence issues, and reckless behavior. At the individual auditor level, integrity violations and reckless behavior are positively associated with the frequency and severity of PCAOB sanctions. Our findings indicate that significantly higher financial penalties for individual auditors (audit firms) arise from manipulation of audit evidence (quality control criticisms). Further, the PCAOB financially penalizes Big 4-affiliated auditors and firms significantly more than their non-Big 4 counterparts. Other factors such as multiple individuals being implicated in an SDO and whether a firm and individual(s) are both implicated in the SDO are important considerations in sanction(s) imposed by the PCAOB. Overall, our findings suggest that the PCAOB adopts a responsive enforcement strategy when monitoring the auditors in their ethical and audit compliance efforts.

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We examine how social connections between successive CEOs influence policy changes enacted by incoming CEOs. Using forced turnovers, we document fewer policy changes when incoming CEOs are connected to outgoing CEOs. Our results remain consistent when exposed to tests assessing endogeneity concerns such as omitted variables, selection biases and homophily concerns. We find that the reduction in policy changes is more prominent when social ties are stronger due to greater association between the individuals. Analyses further reveal that such limited policy changes enacted by connected incoming CEOs could deteriorate firm performance, highlighting the potential importance of the findings in the CEO selection process. JEL Classification: D91, J63, M12