Investigation on The Impact of Audit Committee Characteristics on the Information Content of Earnings Announcements with emphasis on Market Reaction in Companies Listed in Tehran stock exchange

Varieus reactions of investors to earnings information cause different reactions of the market. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of audit committee characteristics on the content of earnings announcement information with emphasis on market reaction. Characteristics of the Audit Committee include the number of Audit Committee members, the independence of Audit Committee members, the Chief Financial Officer, and the financial expertise of the members. The stock price changes in the market before and after the annual corporate general meeting were used to measure the market response to the earnings information content. This research is applied in terms of purpose and methodology is causal in nature. The statistical population of the study is listed companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange that were sampled by systematic elimination of 114 companies in this statistical sample. The research period is from 2012 to 2019. Spearman correlation and regression analysis were used to test the formulated hypotheses. The results show that audit committee characteristics do not have an impact on market reaction to the information content of the earnings announcement.