Audit committee characteristics and financial statement comparability

Medhat Endrawes, Zhuoan Feng, Meiting Lu, Yaowen Shan

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

28 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Financial statement comparability enables weighing the similarities and differences in financial performance between firms. Prior studies mainly focus on the role of accounting standards in the production of comparability, but the role of economic agents has been largely overlooked. We find that a firm’s audit committee size and financial expertise affect its financial statement comparability. Financial information tends to be more comparable among industry peers when audit committees are larger and more members have financial and accounting expertise. The effect of audit committee expertise on comparability is stronger for firms with less independent and smaller boards, for firms with non-Big 4 auditors and for firms with CEOs serving as the chairperson of the boards.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2361-2395
Number of pages35
JournalAccounting and Finance
Volume60
Issue number3
Early online date8 Mar 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Sept 2020

Keywords

  • Audit committee
  • Corporate governance
  • Financial statement comparability

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