Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate the association between a corporate executive’s gender and audit fees. Based on the findings of extant research that there are gender-based differences that may have implications for the financial reporting process, the authors posit an association between CEO gender and audit fees. Design/methodology/approach – The authors test their hypothesis by performing both univariate and multivariate regression analyses on a sample of 8,402 Compustat firm-year observations from US firms for 2003-2010. Findings – The authors' findings indicate that firms with female CEOs are associated with higher audit fees. Their results hold after controlling for self-selection bias and factors shown by prior studies to be associated with audit fees. Research limitations/implications – Although the authors control for factors that would increase audit fees, their study is limited by the degree to which higher audit fees reflect higher quality audits. Also, because their sample is from large publicly traded nonfinancial firms, their results may not be applicable to other types of firms. The authors study has implications for policy setting because their findings provide some evidence of a significant association between a CEO characteristic (gender) and financial reporting quality. Their findings, thus, provide some support for the Securities and Exchange Commission requirement that CEOs should certify their firm’s financial statements. Originality/value – The authors study contributes to the audit fees and corporate governance literature by providing empirical evidence of an association between audit fees and CEO gender. To their knowledge, no study, to date, has investigated this association.

a b s t r a c tWe investigate whether women audit partners earn lower audit fees than their men colleagues. By examining 2002e2011 fee data for audit engagements in Taiwan, where the names of signing audit partners are disclosed, we find that audit engagements with women audit partners are related to significantly lower audit fees than those with men counterparts. Furthermore, we document that such fee difference is aggravated in the industries with fewer women audit partners, cannot be explained by the differences in audit quality and audit reporting lags, and is robust to controlling for firm fixed effects.Our finding provides evidence to support the existence of fee discrimination against women audit partners in Taiwan's auditing industry. Our results should be of interests to audit firms with regard to human resource decisions.

Real earnings management, Accounting earnings management, Regulatory incentives, China Securities Regulatory Commission, M41 Accounting, G28 Government Policy and Regulation,

This paper investigates whether financial reporting quality improves or deteriorates after the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) decided to eliminate the Form 20‐F reconciliation requirement for foreign cross‐listed firms following International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Using a difference‐in‐differences research design, we find that cross‐listed IFRS firms are less likely to restate financial statements after the SEC revoked their reconciliation requirement, as compared to cross‐listed non‐IFRS firms that still need to prepare the reconciliation. Moreover, such a reduction in the occurrence of financial restatements is more prominent when cross‐listed IFRS firms engage global industry‐specialist auditors and originate from common law countries. Together, this paper lends support to the elimination of the reconciliation requirement for cross‐listed IFRS firms and highlights the important roles of auditors and the legal environment in shaping financial reporting quality.