Purpose – Recent US reforms aimed at strengthening audit committees and their structure grant independent audit committees the responsibility to appoint, dismiss, and compensate auditors. The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between audit committee characteristics and...

We study the effects of the intensity of board monitoring on directors' effectiveness in performing their monitoring and advising duties. We find that monitoring quality improves when a majority of independent directors serve on at least two of the three principal monitoring committees. These...