Auditor Lobbying on Accounting Standards The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Allen, Abigail, Karthik Ramanna, and Sugata Roychowdhury. "Auditor Lobbying on Accounting Standards." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 15-055, December 2014. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:13688359 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Open Access Policy Articles, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#OAP Auditor Lobbying on Accounting Standards Abigail Allen Karthik Ramanna Sugata Roychowdhury Working Paper 15-055 December 22, 2014 Copyright © 2014 by Abigail Allen, Karthik Ramanna, and Sugata Roychowdhury Working papers are in draft form. This working paper is distributed for purposes of comment and discussion only. It may not be reproduced without permission of the copyright holder. Copies of working papers are available from the author. Auditor lobbying on accounting standards Abigail Allen Harvard Business School
[email protected] Karthik Ramanna* Harvard Business School
[email protected] Sugata Roychowdhury Boston College
[email protected] This draft: December 22, 2014 Abstract We examine how Big N auditors’ changing incentives impact their comment-letter lobbying on U.S. GAAP over the first thirty-four years of the FASB (1973–2006). We examine the influence of auditors’ lobbying incentives arising from three basic factors: managing expected litigation and regulatory costs; catering to clients’ preferences for flexibility in GAAP; and being conceptually aligned with the FASB, particularly on the use of fair values in accounting.