Audit Firm Lobbying on Proposed Disclosure Requirements

This study investigates incentives of audit firms to lobby on proposed disclosure requirements. The results are consistent with the proposition that higher expected costs of non-compliance with statutory disclosure requirements compared to professional standards provide less incentives for audit firms to lobby in favour of increased statutory disclosure requirements and more incentives to lobby in favour of increased professional disclosure requirements. Their lobbying in favour on either source of proposed disclosure requirements is not associated with increasing size of the audit firm, the amount of new auditing to be generated by the disclosure requirements or by whether they are specialised in the proposed requirements.