A report on research into the effect of audit committees in the March 2018 CPA Journal (April Klein, “Questioning the Effectiveness of Independent Audit Committees: Does the Current Regulatory Regime Improve Reporting Quality?” http://bit.ly/2LFI6mg) describes measuring various market and other effects of the audit committee and finding none:
The research measured benefits in two distinct ways: stock market reactions surrounding the process leading to the adoption of a prior regulation requiring companies to maintain independent audit committees, and examination of changes in earnings manipulations and the number of egregious accounting restatements before and after the new requirement became effective. The findings throughout were consistent: there is no evidence that requiring…
