This study investigates the association between audit committee incentive-based compensation and financial reporting failures reported in restatements. Specifi- cally, we evaluate whether short-term and long-term incentive compensation (i.e., short-term and long-term stock option grants) for audit committee members is associated with accounting restatements due to error or fraud. 1 We use accounting restatements as a proxy for financial reporting failure because they are relatively objective measures of reporting failure (e.g., Government Accountability Office [GAO] 2002, 2006; Myers, Myers, Palmrose, and Scholz 2005) and because they are increasingly common and costly events that are linked to audit committee member oversight performance.