2017 - 18 Year in Review

29 REGULATORY SPILLOVERS IN COMMON AUDIT MARKETS We (Minnis and coauthors Raphael Duguay and Andrew Sutherland) find that Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) had two significant effects on the audit market for nonpublic entities. The first, short-run effect stems from inelastic labor supply coupled with an increase in audit demand from public companies. As a result, private companies reduced their use of attested financial reports in bank financing by 12 percent, and audit fee increases for nonprofit organizations (NPOs) more than doubled. The second, long-run effect was a transformation in the audit supply structure. After SOX, NPOs were less likely to match with auditors most exposed to public companies, while auditors increasingly specialized their offices based on client type. Audit market concentration for NPOs dropped by more than half within five years of SOX and remained at this level through the end of our sample in 2013, while the number of suppliers increased by 26 percent. Our results demonstrate how regulation directed at public firms causes economically important spillovers for nonpublic entities. Michael Minnis Associate Professor of Accounting