We use experimental markets to examine whether providing consulting services to a non-audit client impacts audit quality. Our paper directly addresses concerns raised by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board that the largest public accounting firms' growth in their consulting practices threatens audit quality. We conduct an experiment proposed using a registration-based editorial process. We compare a baseline where the auditor does not provide consulting services to conditions where auditors provide consulting to audit clients or where auditors only provide consulting services to non-audit clients. Our unique design provides evidence on whether providing consulting to non-audit clients strengthens the salience of a client-cooperative social norm that reduces audit quality. We do not find differences in audit quality by condition in our planned analysis, however we find greater variation in audit quality in the conditions where auditors provide consulting services compared to the baseline. In unplanned analyses, our results suggest providing consulting services increases auditor cooperation with managers, increasing audit quality when managers prefer high audit quality and decreasing audit quality when managers prefer low audit quality. JEL codes: G41; M42

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We study the consequences of a 2010 change in the investment adviser qualification exam that reallocated coverage from the rules and ethics section to the technical material section. Comparing advisers with the same employer in the same location and year, we find those passing the exam with more rules and ethics coverage are one-fourth less likely to commit misconduct. The exam change appears to affect advisers' perception of acceptable conduct and not just their awareness of specific rules or selection into the qualification. Those passing the rules and ethics-focused exam are more likely to depart employers experiencing scandals. Such departures also predict future scandals. Our paper offers the first archival evidence on how rules and ethics training affects conduct and labor market activity in the financial sector. * We are grateful to Kameron Hillstrom at the North American Securities Administrators Association for providing historical information about securities exams. We appreciate comments from Ben Charoenwong, John Core, William Gerken, Robert Gibbons, Nemit Shroff, Eugene Soltes, Ahmed Tahoun, Ann Tenbrunsel, and seminar participants at the MIT Organizational Economics lunch, the MIT Accounting brown bag, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Kowaleski acknowledges support from the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame. Sutherland acknowledges support from MIT Sloan. Vetter acknowledges support from the Economic and Social Research Council and London School of Economics.