Impacts of Audit Committee characteristics on Firms Risk

Abstract

Audit committee is one of the corporate governance mechanisms, and there is little evidence in its role and characteristics in risk monitoring and governance in companies. The aim of this study is to examine the impact of audit committee’s characteristics on corporate risk. In this study, the impact of two characteristics of audit committee, consisting of accounting expertise and independence, on the risk of companies was examined, using data from the companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange in the years 2013 to 2015, and the pooled data model. The risk was measured by stock returns volatility and generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model. Results showed that accounting expertise and independence of audit committee have positive impacts on stock returns volatility as corporate risk.

Keywords

• audit committee
• accounting expertise
• audit committee independence
• risk
• stock return volatility