Studying the effect of audit committee independence on the relationship between comparability of financial statements and stock returns

The most important factor considered by investors is stock returns. Stock return includes all income from holding stocks plus capital gains. Therefore, investors in the capital market try to spend their savings in investments that have the highest returns. The purpose of this research is to study the effect of auditor committee independence on the relationship between comparability of financial statements and stock returns. The statistical research population of companies admitted to the Tehran Stock Exchange and the studied sample includes 139 companies admitted during the years 2015 to 2019. The descriptive-survey research method is a combination of causation-correlation in terms of the relationship between variables, and it is practical in terms of its purpose. The regression method and panel data as well as the fixed effects model were used to process and test the hypothesis. The results obtained from the analysis of the hypothesis showed that the independence of the audit committee has a positive and significant effect on the relationship between the comparability of financial statements and stock returns. According to the results of the research, it is suggested to managers of commercial units and compilers of accounting standards to help investors in evaluating performance. Companies should pay attention to improving the comparability of financial statements.