While acknowledging the above cavea

While acknowledging the above caveats, this paper contributes an interesting case to the literature in several ways. First, this paper contributes to the literature on audit firm merger by investigating broader, different issues than prior studies. The merged audit firm may benefit clients by completing audits promptly without raising audit fees or lowering audit quality. Thus, consolidation in the audit market following an audit firm merger should not automatically be viewed negatively, which is noteworthy given the generally negative views on audit market concentration. Second, this paper contributes to the literature on audit report lag by highlighting the importance of studying report lag by industry after mergers. Such an approach is applied because audit staff utilization is typically along specific industry lines and studying aggregate report lag may mask the results of individual industries. Thus, this study complements the literature on audit report lag following a merger.