Recently, a collaborative paper by Professor LIAO Lin from the School of Internal Audit at Nanjing Audit University, titled A New Wave of Talent: Big 4 Response to New Partner Qualification Requirements in China, has been published online in The Accounting Review (TAR), a top-tier international journal in accounting. This marks Professor Liao's second publication in this journal, following his first in 2023.
Grounded in the Chinese context and focusing on China's unique institutional environment, this paper leverages an exogenous regulatory event—the Ministry of Finance's 2012 requirement that at least 80% of signing partners at the Big 4 accounting firms must hold the Chinese Institute of Certified Public Accountants (CICPA) qualification by 2017—to systematically examine the impact of this regulatory intervention on the market share and audit quality of the international Big 4 firms. By taking the institutional reforms of China's audit market as its point of departure, this study addresses a central academic debate on how auditor qualification regulations affect audit quality and market structure.
Founded in 1926, The Accounting Review is the official journal of the American Accounting Association (AAA) and is widely recognized as one of the three premier international journals in the field of accounting. It is also ranked among the UTD24 elite business journals, enjoying extremely high academic prestige both domestically and internationally. Publishing multiple papers in this journal not only reflects Professor Liao Lin and his collaborators' sustained commitment to the international frontiers of accounting research, but also significantly enhances Nanjing Audit University's global academic influence in the disciplines of auditing and accounting.
