We utilise the Australian ‘comply or explain’ corporate governance regime to examine the explanations given for not having an audit committee and whether these explanations are consistent with underlying firm characteristics. We hand-collect explanations provided by firms, and find the most...

Motivated by two opposing views, the limited supply view and the discrimination view, we examine the impact of gender diversity guidelines on the strength of the association between the presence of female audit committee members and audit quality. The limited supply view predicts that the effect...