Defense of Viktoria Kern

On June 10th, Viktoria Kern successfully defended her Doctoral thesis “The Role of Regulation in Auditing” which was supervised by CAR’s Ralf Ewert and David Windisch. Her dissertation consists of a literature re-view, an analytical paper, and an empirical essay. The objective of Viktoria´s thesis is to improve the under-standing of the role of regulation in auditing, particu-larly focusing on how regulatory frameworks influence auditor independence, financial reporting transpar-ency, and overall audit quality.
In her literature review, Victoria investigates how audit regulations shape auditor independence and financial reporting transparency, thereby influencing the overall quality of audits. The analytical paper focuses on the role of accounting conservatism in the regulatory land-scape and analyzes the complex interplay among cor-porate governance, managerial manipulation, and ac-counting conservatism. The empirical essay addresses the question of how certain disclosure requirements influence the dynamics between auditors, investors, and firms within the audit ecosystem and specifically examines the impact of audit matter disclosure follow-ing the introduction of ISA 701 across Europe.