We find evidence that, after SOX, audit committees’ stock-option equity incentives are
associated with reduced financial reporting quality, as proxied by a company’s propensity to meet
or beat its consensus analyst forecast. This result is of greater economic significance for companies
with high-growth opportunities. Interestingly, our results also suggest that non-option equity
incentives are not associated with financial reporting quality. The observed difference for options
and non-option equity may be due to a short-term focus created by exercisable stock options and the
ability for directors to divest stock options with less scrutiny than held stock (see, e.g., Burns and
Kedia 2006). Overall, our results suggest that the Congressional directive that audit committee
members be independent outside directors may not completely remove the potential that director
stock-option incentives result in reduced financial reporting quality