산업전문가 감사인과 피감사기업의 투자의사결정 (The Relationship between Industry Specialist Auditors and the Client Firm Investment Decision)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국회계학회
· 수록지 정보 : 회계학연구 / 39권 / 1호 / 185 ~ 216페이지
· 저자명 : 최승욱, 배길수

초록

본 연구는 국내 감사시장에서 산업전문성을 가지는 감사인으로부터 감사서비스를 받은 기업의 적정투자수준이 그렇지 않은 기업에 비해 높은지를 조사한다. 감사인선임에 존재하는 내생성을 통제하기 위해 이단계 추정법을 사용하고 적정투자수준을 실제 투자가 적정예상투자수준과 동일한 정도로 추정할 때 산업전문가 감사인으로부터 감사를 받은 기업의 적정투자수준은 그렇지 않은 기업에 비해 상대적으로 높았다. 기업의 투자수준에 대한 측정치를 과잉과 과소투자로 분리해서 조사하면 산업전문가 감사인으로부터 감사를 받은 피감사기업은 과잉투자와 음의 관계를 가지고 있으나 과소투자와는 유의한 관계를 보이지 않았다. 또한 내생성을 추가적으로 통제하기 위해 비전문가에서 산업전문가 감사인으로 그리고 산업전문가 감사인에서 비전문가 감사인으로 감사인을 변경한 표본을 사용한 분석은 산업전문가 감사인으로 감사인을 변경한 피감사기업에서는 적정투자수준이 향상되는 반면 비전문가 감사인으로 감사인을 변경한 기업은 적정투자수준이 하락하였다. 산업전문가 감사인을 선행연구에서 사용한 바 있는 피감사기업 총자산과 매출액, 피감사기업의 수 기준 시장점유율이 가장 큰 감사인과 시장점유율이 24% 이상인 감사인, 점유율의 1, 2위인 감사인을 산업전문가 감사인으로 정의한 추가 분석의 결과도 산업전문가 감사인 정의의 차이와 무관하게 전반적으로 산업전문가 감사인으로부터 감사를 받은 피감사기업의 적정투자수준이 높았다. 피감사기업의 규모나 표본기업을 Big 4 감사인에게 감사를 받은 기업으로 한정해도 산업전문가 감사인의 효과는 전체표본을 사용하여 얻은 결과와 질적으로 동일하였다. 감사인의 산업내 시장점유율을 구간별로 나누어 분석한 결과에서는 30-40%의 점유율을 가지는 전문가 감사인이 감사를 했을 때 적정투자수준이 가장 높은 것을 보이고 있다. 마지막으로 산업전문가 감사인의 피감사기업 적정투자수준과의 양의 상관관계가 전적으로 선행연구에서 발견한 회계수치의 품질향상을 통해서 나타나는 것이 아니라는 것을 보이기 위해 산업전문가 감사인과 재량적 발생액으로 추정한 회계품질의 교호변수를 사용하여 분석하였으며, 이를 통해 회계품질을 통제하고 나서도 산업전문가 감사인의 효과가 존재한다는 것을 보였다.

영어초록

Value of high quality audits has been extensively examined in the auditing literature. While most previous studies focus on the issues related to auditor size proxied by Big N and non-Big N dichotomy (i.e., quality differences between the Big N and non-Big N auditors), a strand of research has posited and found that the audit quality of industry specialist auditors (ISAs) is higher than that of their non-ISA counterparts. More specifically, the accounting and disclosure quality for client firms of ISA is higher than that of non-ISA. Previous studies also find that both equity and debt cost of capital is lower for firms that hire ISA compared with client firms with non-ISA. In this study, we examine a possibility that the role of ISAs extends beyond what previous studies have demonstrated. For instance, ISAs can provide advice beyond basic Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) to client firms, thus adding value to the client firm through high quality services that encompass both financial and non-financial aspects. One such aspects is firms’ investment decisions. Hence, we examine whether investment decision of the firms that hire ISAs is higher than that of the firms with non-ISAs. There are reasons to believe that ISAs might help client firms improve investment efficiency in several different but related ways. First, ISAs can more effectively curb both intentional and unintentional errors in the financial statements through their expertise in the respective industry relative to non-ISAs. ISAs also help clients develop industry specific disclosure policy through their knowledge and expertise. Given that misleading earnings and fraudulent financial reporting lead to distorted investment decisions, the high reporting and disclosure quality associated with ISAs is likley to help firms make more efficient investment decisions. Second, higher audit quality of ISAs enable firms to reduce information asymmetry, thereby making funds available for firms to undertake value-enhancing projects that otherwise would have been passed up for the lack of funding. This also likely helps firms improve their investment efficiency. Third, previous studies find that services of ISAs are not limited to client financial statements audit.
Conversely, there are also reasons to doubt that the effect of hiring ISAs will be consequential on client firms’ investment efficiency. First, auditors are not obligated to audit client firms’ investment decisions per se. Second, although previous research has demonstrated that ISAs are associated with higher accounting and disclosure quality of the client firm, recent studies question the validity of the positive relation between alleged high quality audits by the Big N auditors and accounting quality.
Using the conventional proxies of ISAs and after controlling for endogeneity using a Heckman two-stage regression analysis, we find compelling evidence that ISAs are positively associated with client firm investment decision. When investment decision is split into under-investment and over-investment, the positive association is more pronounced in the over-investment direction, indicating that ISAs suppress over-investment more than do they under-investment. The results are qualitatively robust if client assets or the number of clients instead of client revenues are utilized when calculating industry specialization. We also demonstrate that investment decision improves when client firms change auditors from a non-ISA to a ISA. On the other hand, investment decision declines when client firms change auditors from a ISA to a non-ISA.
In addition, irrespective of the differences in the definition of industry specialization (e.g., auditors with the largest market share dummy; auditors with the market share equal to or over 24 percent; auditors with the largest and the second largest market share), the results are unaffected. We also find that the relationship is not uniform across different market shares of industry specialist auditors. More specially, the positive association is the most pronounced when the specialist auditors’ market share is between 30 and 40 percent. Overall, our findings constitute convincing evidence that industry specialist auditors have higher audit quality in the Korean audit markets. We also show that the positive association between ISAs and investment decision is not entirely attributable to higher accounting quality associated with ISAs as demonstrated in the extant literature.
Our work has an important contribution to the extant literature in that it provides robust evidence on the role of ISAs on client firms’ real investment decisions, thereby adding insights into the literature on both ISAs and investment efficiency alike. Specifically, our finding indicates that ISAs are positively associated with client firm investment efficiency beyond what has been expected through the high quality reporting or disclosure attributed to ISAs as suggested in the extant literature.

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