The effect of audit committee characteristics on forward-looking disclosure

Purpose: This study aims to examine the effect of the audit committee characteristics on forward-looking disclosure. Design/methodology/approach: The characteristics of audit committee that examined are audit committee expertise, audit committee meeting frequency and audit committee size. To measure the extent of forward-looking disclosure, this study did content analysis using a checklist of 22 forward-looking items. The samples of this research are 285 non-financial firms listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in the year 2015. Ordinary least square regression is used for hypotheses testing. Findings: The results of this study show that the audit committee accounting expertise, audit committee financial expertise, the frequency of audit committee meetings and the size of the audit committee have a significant positive effect on the forward-looking disclosure. Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study examining the audit committee characteristics on forward-looking disclosure in the context of Indonesia, one of the emerging markets.