The Impact of Audit Committee Characteristics

This research investigates the impact of audit committees’ characteristics (audit committee size independence activity financial expertise and percentage of common stocks owned by audit committee) on improved accounting conservatism for a sample of 50 Jordanian industrial corporations listed in Amman Stock Exchange ASE during the period of 2004-2009. To achieve this goal the study measures accounting conservatism using two methods Book-to-Market approach and ratio of total accruals to gross profit. By using Pooled Data Regression the study found the audit committee characteristics examined are not significantly related to accounting conservatism excluding the financial experience of audit committee which we found to have a positive relationship to conservatism.