Search Results (7)

Sub-Saharan Africa’s (SSA) corporate environment, like many emerging markets, is marked by institutional voids, weak oversight structures, and patriarchal leadership norms, which heighten the risk of real earnings management (REM). This study examines how CEO characteristics and audit committee gender diversity influence REM among listed manufacturing firms in 12 SSA countries from 2012 to 2023. Anchored in agency theory and Upper Echelon Theory, this study draws on 1189 firm-year observations and employs Pooled OLS, Random Effects, Fixed Effects, Feasible Generalised Least Squares (FGLS), and System GMM estimators. Findings show that female CEOs are consistently associated with lower REM, underscoring the ethical conservatism linked to gender-inclusive leadership. CEO ownership shows a positive and significant association with REM in System GMM, though findings vary across models, indicating potential institutional effects. The firm size is negatively and significantly related to REM in Pooled, RE, and FGLS models, but becomes nonsignificant in FE and System GMM, suggesting the role of external scrutiny may be sensitive to model dynamics. Leverage exhibits a positive and significant relationship with REM in most models, but turns negative and nonsignificant under System GMM, pointing to endogeneity concerns. Interaction effects and country-specific regressions affirm that governance impacts differ across contexts. Policy reforms should prioritise gender-diverse leadership and tailored oversight mechanisms. Full article

Audit committees monitor the actions of managers as they pursue the goal of shareholder wealth maximization. The purpose of this study is to measure the impact of audit committee oversight on novel aspects of firm performance, including investor rationality, price expectations, human capital, and research and development expenses. It extends the literature to non-financial outcomes of audit committee oversight. The literature thus far has focused on the financial effects of audit committee oversight, such as return on assets, return on equity, risk, debt capacity, and firm value. Data was collected from 588 publicly traded firms in the U.S. pharmaceutical industry and energy industry from 2010 to 2022. Audit oversight was measured by the novel measurement of the frequency of the term ‘audit committee’ in annual reports and Form 10Ks from the SeekEdgar database. COMPUSTAT provided the remainder of the data. Panel Data fixed-effects models were used to analyze the data. Audit committee oversight significantly increased investor rationality, significantly reduced price expectations, and significantly increased human capital investment. An inverted U-shaped relationship occurred for audit committee oversight and research and development expenses, with audit oversight first increasing research and development expenses, then decreasing them. The study makes several contributions. First, the study uses a novel measure of audit oversight. Second, the study predicts the effect of audit committee oversight on unexplored non-financial measures, such as human capital and research and development expense. Third, the study offers a current test of the Miller model, as the last tests were performed over 20 years ago. Fourth, the study examines the impact of auditing on market measures that have not been explored in the literature, such as investor rationality and short selling. Full article

To enhance financial reporting quality through increased oversight, the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) Section 407 mandates that firms disclose whether their audit committee includes a financial expert or explains the absence of such an expert. The definition of a financial expert has been broadened to encompass not only accounting knowledge but also finance or supervisory experience. Financial experts on audit committees possess an advantage in information access due to their role on the committee and an advantage in information processing because of their superior skills. This combination of skills and access to private information enables audit committee financial experts to achieve superior performance. We review articles that show audit committee financial experts leveraging their information advantage in accounting to improve financial transparency, in auditing to maintain audit integrity, and in corporate governance to enhance monitoring effectiveness. Full article

This study examines the moderating role of female audit committee chairs on the relationship between audit quality (measured by audit fees) and corporate tax avoidance. The analysis is based on 165 UK firms between 2011 and 2021 using static panel data regression models and Lewbel’s heteroscedastic identification method to check robustness. The findings highlight the significant role of audit quality in reducing corporate tax avoidance. In addition, the female audit committee chair strengthens the negative relationship between audit quality and tax avoidance. This study has many implications. For corporate governance, it shows the value of female leadership in audit committees, especially in curbing aggressive tax strategies. Firms should increase female representation in key roles, like audit committee chairs, to improve oversight and ethical financial practices. For regulators and policymakers, it supports the case for strengthening gender diversity mandates to improve corporate transparency and accountability. Tax authorities can use the fact that firms with strong audit quality and female-led audit committees are less likely to engage in tax avoidance to focus their audits on companies with weaker governance structures. Full article

The board of directors appoints the audit committee to assess the financial performance of the firm. The audit committee uses reports provided by audit firms, such as Form 10Ks, and annual reports to assess firm financial performance. The degree of audit oversight quality is a governance measure, which, if effective, may reduce firm risk. This study measures the effect of three measures of audit oversight quality on insolvency risk, systematic risk, and volatility of return on assets for a sample of U.S. pharmaceutical firms and energy firms from 2010 to 2022. All measures of audit oversight quality reduced firm risk, with the first measure reducing both systematic risk and volatility of return on assets, the second measure reducing systematic risk, and the third measure reducing volatility of return on assets. As institutional ownership is also a governance measure, we tested whether its joint effect with audit oversight quality reduced firm risk. This hypothesis was supported for all three measures of audit oversight quality for systematic risk and for the third audit oversight quality measure for volatility of assets. Robustness was established by replicating the regressions with an alternate governance measure, which yielded similar results. Endogeneity of all audit oversight quality measures was absent due to lack of significance of leverage, firm size, equity multiplier, and firm value in reducing risk through their effect on audit oversight quality. Full article

Audit committees are appointed by the board of directors of corporations to oversee the financial reporting process, monitor financial control processes, hire and assess independent auditors, and communicate findings with management and auditors. We propose two new measures of audit oversight quality. The first measure is purely subjective, in that it scores audit committees on a scale based on their ability to fulfill one or more of their responsibilities, as mentioned in annual reports, Form 10-K and DEF 13A. The second measure concerns audit committee activity, as it measures the number of times the term ‘audit committee’ is mentioned in these documents. Both measures were obtained for U.S. pharmaceutical companies and energy companies from 2010 to 2022. The audit oversight quality measures were regressed in regard to profitability (measured by return on assets and return on equity), debt capacity (measured by equity multiplier), and firm value (measured by Tobin’s q and economic value added). Audit oversight quality, using both measures, reduces the return on equity. Audit oversight quality, using both measures, had a disciplining effect on debt. Increases in the oversight of increasing debt discourage the propensity to increase borrowing using collateral (debt capacity), and reduce investor returns through investment in debt-financed projects (return on equity). Audit oversight quality, using both measures, exhibited a size effect on the firm’s value, in that an increase in the firm size with high audit oversight quality increases the firm’s value. However, it is possible that only the first measure of audit oversight quality significantly increased the firm’s value, as only the first measure exhibited robustness to the endogeneity effect of size. Full article

The recent financial crisis highlighted the need for a strong emphasis on the effectiveness of board risk oversight practices. Good corporate governance upholds effective risk management, which in turn ensures the flexibility to reply to unpredicted threats and take benefit of opportunities. Thus, risk management affords corporate resilience that engenders competitive advantage due to the capacity to circumvent, deter, defend, react, and adjust to any kind of disturbance, besides recovering quickly. Guaranteeing that the board is prepared and adequately resilient to deal with a crisis circumstance is a crucial part of good governance. By employing a data set of companies listed in Romania, this paper analyzes whether boards of directors influence risk management. We measure boards by means of size, independence, diversity, establishment of Consultative Committees, as well as CEO duality, gender, age, and tenure. Based on ten financial ratios, we develop two risk indicators regarding shareholders’ wealth and short-term risk, alongside a global business failure risk tool, by means of principal component analysis. Furthermore, the output of the multivariate regression analysis show that CEO gender, the size of the board, and Audit Committee negatively influence business failure risk. Full article