審計委員會特性對財務報表可比性之影響─以臺灣公司為例

財務資訊之品質為財務報表使用者相當重視的議題，良好之財務資訊品質可以幫助外部投資人、債權人等利害關係人正確的評估公司經營的績效並作出適當的經濟決策，而可比性即為重要的財務報表品質特性之一。可比性與其他品質特性不同，其著重於兩個個體或兩個期間以上之財務資訊的比較，能夠協助財務報表使用者辨認公司間財務資訊之異同，而並非僅是衡量單一公司或期間之營運狀況，因此可比性對於財務資訊之品質具有舉足輕重的影響。另外，近年來我國也越來越重視獨立董事與審計委員會制度及職能，希望藉由其充足的資源與專業性以達成監督的效能，並增強公司治理效果，故本文將探討審計委員會對財務報表可比性之影響。　　本研究以我國2014年至2020年已設置審計委員會之上市櫃公司為研究對象，探討審計委員會特性是否能提升財務報表可比性，即當審計委員會品質越好時，是否能增強財務報表可比性使財務資訊品質較佳。本文以審計委員會之規模大小及財務與會計專家比率作為衡量審計委員會品質之標準，並參照De Franco et al. (2011)之模型衡量可比性。研究結果顯示審計委員會規模大小對於可比性沒有顯著之影響，而當審計委員會財務與會計專家比率越高時，公司之財務報表可比性將有顯著之提升。此外，進一步探討公司治理情形及會計師事務所查核分別與審計委員會特性之交互作用對財務報表可比性之影響，然而公司治理情形與會計師事務所查核與審計委員會特性之交互作用並無對財務報表可比性產生顯著之影響。最後，考量金融產業之特殊性，因此排除金融業之樣本進行分析，但對財務報表可比性之關聯與前述實證結果並無顯著不同。

關鍵字

審計委員會；財務報表可比性

並列摘要

The quality of financial information is an issue that the users of financial statements pay great attention to. Good quality of financial information can help stakeholders such as external investors and creditors to evaluate the company’s operating performance correctly and make appropriate economic decisions, so comparability is one of the important quality characteristics of financial statements. Comparability focuses on the comparison of financial information of more than two individuals or two periods, which is different from other quality characteristics. It can help users of financial statements identify the similarities and differences of financial information between companies, rather than just measuring the performance of a single company or period, thus comparability has a significant impact on the quality of financial information. In addition, we have also paid more attention to the system and functions of independent directors and audit committees in recent years. We hope that it can achieve the effectiveness of supervision and enhance the effectiveness of corporate governance through its sufficient resources and professionalism. Therefore, in this article will discuss the impact of audit committee on the financial statement comparability. This study relies on listed companies that have established audit committees from 2014 to 2020 in Taiwan, and explores whether the characteristics of audit committees can improve the comparability of financial statements, that is, when the quality of the audit committee is better, whether it can enhance the comparability of financial statements, and results in the quality of financial information better. This article takes the audit committee size and the ratio of financial and accounting experts as the standard to measure the quality of the audit committee, and use the model of De Franco et al. (2011) to measure comparability. The research results show that the size of the audit committee has no significant effect on the comparability. However, when the ratio of the audit committee's financial and accounting experts is higher, the comparability of the company's financial statements will be significantly improved. In addition, we further considers the influence of the interaction between corporate governance and auditing by accounting firms and the characteristics of audit committees on the comparability of financial statements. However, the interaction between corporate governance and auditing by accounting firms and the characteristics of audit committees, which doesn’t result a significant impact to financial statements comparability. Finally, considering the particularity of the financial industry, we exclude the sample of the financial company for analysis, but the correlation between the comparability of financial statements is not significantly different from the preceding empirical results.