Add the engagement partner's name to an audit report and you'll likely get a better audit, but it will come at a price.
How do we know? Because that's exactly what happened when the United Kingdom required the lead partner on audit engagements to take pen in hand and sign the report.
A new academic study finds that the U.K. signature requirement—imposed in 2006 and similar to one U.S. audit regulators are currently considering—has led to better audit quality, but also higher audit fees. The study, “Costs and Benefits of Requiring an Engagement Partner Signature: Recent Experience in the United Kingdom,” doesn't ...