CPA exam score and auditors’ salaries

The research presents two competing views on the welfare effects of occupational licensing. One stream of literature suggests that licensing is a barrier to entry into professions, limiting competition and resulting in economic rents. A second stream suggests that they can increase well-being by alleviating information problems. We use data on CPAs’ salaries before and after certification to test these conflicting hypotheses. Consistent with the information-alleviation hypothesis, we find a positive correlation between performance on the CPA exam and auditors’ salaries after the exam but not before the exam when the competencies have developed. Furthermore, we find that the positive association is stronger for auditors working at Big 4 firms, younger auditors and male auditors. The abovementioned results indicate that auditors’ technical competencies are valued more highly by Big 4 firms than by non-Big 4 firms. After the CPA certification, we do not observe salary increases that are greater than expected based on previous years’ increases and auditors’ performance on the CPA exam, as the barrier-to-entry theoretical approach suggests. We discuss the implications of the results for the role of CPA regulation.