Audit committees in the U.S. oversee risk management within organizations, including oversight of the disclosure of risk factors in periodic filings. Because audit committees have become increasingly over-burdened, we examine the impact of the busyness of audit committee members, measured via members’ service on other boards, on risk factor disclosures. We find firms with busy members issue disclosures that are of lower quality (i.e., less readable and less focused on firm fundamentals). Further, we find that firms with busy members are more likely to issue timely updates to disclosures. However, these updates are more likely to be vague—implying they are inconsequential to the market. We find these results are primarily driven by service in other non-audit committee roles. In additional cross-sectional tests, we find that our results are strongest when there is more uncertainty or complexity in the business environment. Finally, additional specifications and tests show that our results are robust to concerns related to endogeneity. Overall, we find that the busyness of audit committee members has important implications for risk factor disclosures.

中文翻译：

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审计委员会成员的忙碌程度和风险因素披露


美国的审计委员会负责监督组织内部的风险管理，包括监督定期申报中风险因素的披露。由于审计委员会的负担越来越重，我们研究了审计委员会成员的忙碌程度（通过成员在其他董事会的服务情况来衡量）对风险因素披露的影响。我们发现成员忙碌的公司发布的披露质量较低（即可读性较差且不太关注公司基本面）。此外，我们发现成员繁忙的公司更有可能及时更新披露信息。然而，这些更新更有可能含糊不清——这意味着它们对市场无关紧要。我们发现这些结果主要是由其他非审计委员会角色的服务推动的。在其他横截面测试中，我们发现当业务环境存在更多不确定性或复杂性时，我们的结果最强。最后，额外的规范和测试表明，我们的结果对于与内生性相关的担忧是稳健的。总体而言，我们发现审计委员会成员的忙碌程度对风险因素披露具有重要影响。