Patrick Krauß

• The faith in financial reporting quality and the corresponding auditing process has suffered a lot within the last decade, due to signifi cant accounting scandals (e.g. Enron, WorldCom, Parmalat, etc.). As an answer to these accounting scandals, the law-makers in Germany and the European Union, respectively, have strengthened audit regulations in order to improve the quality of the conducted audits. The aim of this cumulative dissertation is to provide empirical evidence on the effects of intended and already implemented regulative audit requirements in Germany. ln order to consider the wide range of different audit requirements, the dissertation is based on four different study manuscripts, highlighting various perspectives with regard to the appointment, duration, and remuneration of a statutory auditor in the German audit eironment. Besides the empirical evidence for separate auditing issues, this dissertation is also aimed to provide a solid theoretical background and critical suggestions for future research.