We examine the association between audit-committee expertise and asymmetric information in the U.S. equity market. Using precise private information extracted from a decomposed bid-ask spread, we find that the existence of an audit committee with financial expertise is negatively associated with...

Recent US reforms aimed at strengthening audit committees and their structure assign independent audit committees the responsibility to appoint, dismiss, and compensate auditors. We examine the association between audit committee characteristics and auditors' compensation and dismissals...

We examine whether shareholder votes can influence the audit committee and whether this influence is uniform across non-staggered and staggered boards. We find that through voting, shareholders can increase the efficacy of the audit committee, leading to improvements in audit committee...

Voting in directors' elections is one of few mechanisms by which shareholders can influence corporate governance choices. We study elections of directors who serve on the audit committee (AC), a topic receiving little attention in past work. Our results show that AC members, especially those who...

This paper investigates remediation of Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 material weaknesses (MWs). Prior research examines full remediation of all MWs or broad categories thereof. We build on these studies by investigating remediation of specific types of MW, thus measuring progress in improving...