Are Independent Audit Committee Members Objective? Experimental Evidence
通过实验市场研究股票薪酬对审计委员会成员客观性的影响，发现无股票薪酬的成员最客观，而基于当前或未来股东的股票薪酬分别导致激进或过度保守的报告偏好。
ABSTRACT: We use experimental markets to examine stock-based compensation's impact on the objectivity of participants serving as audit committee members.We compare audit committee member reporting objectivity under three regimes: no stock-based compensation, stock-based compensation linked to current shareholders, and stock-based compensation linked to future shareholders. Our experiments show that student participants serving as audit committee members prefer biased reporting when compensated with stock-based compensation. Audit committee members compensated with current stock-based compensation prefer aggressive reporting, and audit committee members compensated with future stock-based compensation prefer overly conservative reporting. We find that audit committee members who do not receive stock-based compensation are the most objective. Our study suggests that stock-based compensation impacts audit committee member preferences for biased reporting, suggesting the need for additional research in this area.