June 05, 2025

The $400 Million Question: Should Congress Eliminate the PCAOB?

50 minutes

What happens when Congress votes to eliminate the watchdog that's overseen public company audits for two decades? In this episode, Blake Oliver sits down with three leading accounting academics—Maureen McNichols from Stanford, Nemit Shroff from MIT, and Daniel Aobdia from Penn State—to examine the research behind the PCAOB's effectiveness and what elimination could mean for audit quality. You'll discover why companies with clean audit inspections can raise capital more easily, how the infamous "40% deficiency rate" actually works, and why these researchers believe dismantling the PCAOB could undermine trust in U.S. capital markets. The conversation reveals the hidden economics of audit oversight and explains why there hasn't been a major public company fraud since Enron and WorldCom.

Chapters

(00:49) - Legislation Impact on Audit Oversight

(01:10) - Meet the Experts

(02:59) - Discussion on PCAOB's Elimination

(08:17) - Research Insights on PCAOB's Effectiveness

(20:11) - Deficiency Rates and Audit Quality

(24:50) - Economic Impact of Fraud and PCAOB's Role

(25:20) - Regulatory Model of the PCAOB

(25:59) - Incentive Structure and Audit Quality

(26:59) - Inspection Deficiency Rates

(28:54) - Restatement Rates vs. Deficiency Rates

(30:23) - Auditor-Client Relationship Tensions

(31:42) - Documentation Issues in Audits

(35:15) - Effectiveness of PCAOB Inspections

(37:49) - Impact of PCAOB on Financial Reporting Quality

(40:33) - Potential Elimination of the PCAOB

(44:00) - Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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Connect with Our Guests:

Maureen McNichols
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/faculty/maureen-mcnichols
Nemit Shroff
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/directory/nemit-shroff
Daniel Aobdia
https://directory.smeal.psu.edu/dza5396

Connect with Blake Oliver, CPA

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blaketoliver
Twitter: https://twitter.com/blaketoliver/

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