【正文】 未來的研究可以檢查出控制是否真的存在著弱點，如對會計專家的比例變化與治理機制具體變化的辨認。報告中具有重大缺陷的公司要與那些報告中沒有缺陷的公司相比，其審計員的變化頻率要大。不同于以往，薩班斯法案要求披露缺陷，重要的變化是薩班斯法案規(guī)定了審計委員會的組成，以及審計人員的作用是要求監(jiān)督管理層披露內部控制報告以及對內部控制的評估。因此，報告暗示， 專家的專業(yè)水平也可能與內部控制缺陷正有關系。 審計委員會的工作效率并不是由規(guī)模本身決定的而是取決于在該委員會的各成員的專業(yè)技能。在美國紐約的納斯達克證券交易所已經采用了新的規(guī)章制度，采取了至少需要三名董事及審計委員會至少有一名委員會成員以金融專家的資格參與，公司才能上市（紐約證券交易所和納斯達克規(guī)則第 303A 章 4350 新規(guī)則（ d）（ 2）） 10 個這樣的法規(guī)變化，意味著公司有可能已經與組成的審計委員會有很大的相似性。我們發(fā)現(xiàn)，那些很少金融專家對內部控制報告有嚴格定義的企業(yè)表明，具有扎實專業(yè)知識能夠更好地對內部控制進行定義，而不只是作為一個虛擬的變量在許多審計中進行研究。 介紹 薩班斯 奧克斯利法案（ SOX） (美國國會 2020)的一個重要的特征是第 404條款，要求管理層披露公司的內部控制財務報告和審計員對管理層的評估意見。我們的研究結果強調，公司的治理比一般公司在內部控制報告方面弱點的審查更重要。 Carcello et al., 2020). Prior studies have also examined the broader role of audit mittees with respect to earnings manipulation and restatements (Klein, 2020。 Abbott et al., 2020). J. Krishnan (2020) hypothesizes that firms that report internal control deficiencies in the preSOX period have audit mittees that are smaller, less independent, and have lesser expertise pared to firms that do not report deficiencies. Prior to SOX, decisions on position of the audit mittee such as number of directors and proportion of independent directors were for the most part voluntarily made by SOX, audit mittees’ role has been substantially strengthened and specific requirements on the position of the mittees have been proposed. For example, all directors serving on the audit mittees are expected to be ‘independent’ directors and panies should disclose if they have at least one mittee member who qualifies as a ‘financial expert’ (SEC, 2020).The New York, American, and NASDAQ stock exchanges have adopted new rules for listing purposes that require at least three directors in audit mittees and that at least one member of the mittee be a ‘financial expert’ (NYSE Rule 303A and NASDAQ Rule 4350(d)(2))10 Such regulatory changes imply that panies are likely to have a great deal of similarity in the ‘position’ of their audit mittees. Thus, characteristics that capture ‘position’ of the mittee are unlikely to be different across firms that report internal control deficiencies and those that do not. Thus we focus on characteristics of mittees that are not necessarily the result of a regulatory provision. The first characteristic we consider is the size of the audit mittee. Larger mittees are more likely to have greater participation in the governance process and are more likely to address controls and reporting more prehensively. Prior auditing literature (see for example, Abbott et al., 2020) has found that the audit mittee’s effectiveness is positively related to the size of the mittee. In contrast, studies such as Yermack (1996) find that larger boards are less efficient than smaller boards. Extending those findings to the individual mittee level would imply that the greater the audit mittee size, the less effective the mittee is likely to be. Given these conflicting implications of prior research we do not specify a directional prediction for audit mittee size. Audit mittee size alone does not result in greater diligence as that would depend upon the technical expertise of the members in the mittee. To address this we consider a second characteristic, the proportion of ‘accounting or nonaccounting financial experts’ in the audit mittee. DeFond et al. (2020) document positive stock price reactions to appointment of financial experts to audit mittees. Bedard et al. (2020) find lower earnings management for firms with experts on their audit mittees. Krish