The Impact of Audit Committee Oversight on Investor Rationality, Price Expectations, Human Capital, and Research and Development Expense

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.