The Influence of Audit Committee Characteristics on Financial Reporting Accuracy and Integrity

Posted: Jun 16, 2017

• Calvin Brooks
• Noa Fitzgerald
• Layla Chavez

Abstract

The integrity of financial reporting represents a cornerstone of capital market efficiency and investor confidence. Within corporate governance structures, audit committees bear primary responsibility for overseeing financial reporting processes and ensuring the accuracy of disclosed information. While extant literature has established correlations between certain audit committee attributes and financial reporting outcomes, the underlying mechanisms and complex interactions remain inadequately understood. Traditional approaches have predominantly employed linear models examining isolated characteristics such as committee size, meeting frequency, and financial expertise, often yielding inconsistent findings across studies. This research addresses these limitations by introducing a multidimensional analytical framework that captures the dynamic interplay between audit committee characteristics and their collective impact on financial reporting quality. Our investigation is guided by three primary research questions that have received limited attention in prior literature. First, how do the qualitative aspects of audit committee deliberations, as reflected in meeting minutes, influence the committee's effectiveness in overseeing financial reporting? Second, what com-