Audit Committee Characteristics and Accounting Conservatism

This study examines the association between four pivotal audit committee characteristics and accounting conservatism. Using a sample of 7,668 Australian firm-year observations from 2004 to 2012, a positive association is found between accounting conservatism and: (a) a director with financial expert...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Sultana, Nigar
Format: Journal Article
Published: Wiley-Blackwell 2015
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/25746
_version_ 1848751793544101888
author Sultana, Nigar
author_facet Sultana, Nigar
author_sort Sultana, Nigar
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description This study examines the association between four pivotal audit committee characteristics and accounting conservatism. Using a sample of 7,668 Australian firm-year observations from 2004 to 2012, a positive association is found between accounting conservatism and: (a) a director with financial expertise on the audit committee; (b) an experienced director on the audit committee; and (c) frequency of audit committee meetings. Within an agency theoretical framework, results suggest that audit committees act as effective monitoring mechanisms in restricting management’s opportunistic behaviour and overstatement of earnings. Results also suggest that regulators (and other stakeholders) should pay greater attention to the financial expertise, experience of members and meeting frequency of the audit committee when judging the committee’s value.
first_indexed 2025-11-14T07:58:22Z
format Journal Article
id curtin-20.500.11937-25746
institution Curtin University Malaysia
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T07:58:22Z
publishDate 2015
publisher Wiley-Blackwell
recordtype eprints
repository_type Digital Repository
spelling curtin-20.500.11937-257462017-09-13T15:18:40Z Audit Committee Characteristics and Accounting Conservatism Sultana, Nigar Corporate governance agency theory conservatism audit committee This study examines the association between four pivotal audit committee characteristics and accounting conservatism. Using a sample of 7,668 Australian firm-year observations from 2004 to 2012, a positive association is found between accounting conservatism and: (a) a director with financial expertise on the audit committee; (b) an experienced director on the audit committee; and (c) frequency of audit committee meetings. Within an agency theoretical framework, results suggest that audit committees act as effective monitoring mechanisms in restricting management’s opportunistic behaviour and overstatement of earnings. Results also suggest that regulators (and other stakeholders) should pay greater attention to the financial expertise, experience of members and meeting frequency of the audit committee when judging the committee’s value. 2015 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/25746 10.1111/ijau.12034 Wiley-Blackwell restricted
spellingShingle Corporate governance
agency theory
conservatism
audit committee
Sultana, Nigar
Audit Committee Characteristics and Accounting Conservatism
title Audit Committee Characteristics and Accounting Conservatism
title_full Audit Committee Characteristics and Accounting Conservatism
title_fullStr Audit Committee Characteristics and Accounting Conservatism
title_full_unstemmed Audit Committee Characteristics and Accounting Conservatism
title_short Audit Committee Characteristics and Accounting Conservatism
title_sort audit committee characteristics and accounting conservatism
topic Corporate governance
agency theory
conservatism
audit committee
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/25746