earticle

영어

This study analyzed the effect of newly listed firms' auditor change of the listed year on audit quality of both listed year and listed just before the year. We analyzed the differences of the audit quality of the listed year between the auditor-changed firms and the auditor-unchanged firms of the listed year. We also analyzed the differences of the audit quality of the listed just before the year between the auditor-changed firms which chose the auditor immediately preceding the designated auditor and auditor-unchanged firms of the listed year. We uses discretionary accruals to proxy for audit quality based on previous research. Discretionary accruals are estimated using the modified Jones model developed by Dechow et al.(1995) and the performance-matched modified Jones model developed by Kothari et al.(2005). This study uses the financial statements of the 339 newly listed firms of non-financial corporate sector from 2006, when the changed auditor designation system was implemented, to 2012 when the financial data is available. The major findings of this study are summarized as follows. First, the differences between the audit quality of listed year of auditor-changed firms and that of auditor-unchanged firms show statistically non-significant results. Those results do not match the previous study(Park and Kwak, 2007) which report the voluntarily auditor-changed firms tend to hire less conservative auditor to perform a more aggressive accounting. Furthermore, the review of the application of the regulation to the local newly listed companies, which restricts the change of a designated auditor for a period of time just after listing as domestic listed foreign companies, can not find the empirical validity of the results. Second, when we compared the audit quality of the listed just before the year of the auditor-unchanged firms with that of the auditor-changed firms which chose the auditor immediately preceding the designated auditor, we found that the audit quality of the auditor-changed firms was higher than that of the auditor-unchanged firms. On the other hand, the differences of the audit quality of listed year between the auditor-unchanged firms and the auditor-changed firms which chose the auditor immediately preceding the designated auditor were not singnificant. These results demonstrate the possibility that the restriction of the opportunistic earnings management of the listed just before the year could be the reason for the auditor change of listed year. However, The non-significant differences of audit quality of listed year shows the possibility that the auditor immediately preceding auditor did not provide the same level of external audits when the company was a privately-held company, but provided the more strengthened level of external audits as those of the designated auditor who continued the audit of the auditor-unchanged firms of listed year. Further analysis of the direction of the auditor change shows the results that the statistically significant differences of audit quality of listed year between the auditor-changed firms which chose non-big4 in the listed year and the auditor-unchanged firms were not found. These results confirmed the robustness of the empirical results which reported the non-significant differences of audit quality of listed year between the auditor-changed firms and the auditor-unchanged firms. This paper contributed to analyzing the effect of auditor designation system which implemented from 2006 on auditor change of listed year. This study differentiated the previous study because we analyzed audit quality of the voluntarily auditor-changed firms and the auditor-unchanged firms in both listed year and listed just before the year, which is the first empirical study as far as we know. The limitation of this study can be the possibility of the relatively small sample size due to both the financial data availableness and small number of newly listed firms themselves in KSE or KOSDAQ after 2006. Finally the results of this study can be utilized as a reference by policy-making and supervisory authorities for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the auditor designation system of newly listed firms.

한국어

본 연구는 신규상장 추진기업의 감사인지정제도가 시행된 2006년부터 상장연도에 감사인을 변경한 기업 및 상장연도에 지정감사인 직전 감사인으로 변경한 기업과 상장연도에 지정감사인이 계속감사를 실시한 기업(이하 비변경기업)을 대상으로 상장 전·후의 재량적 발생액으로 측정된 감사품질의 차이가 있는지를 검토하였다. 2006년부터 2012년의 기간 중에 신규상장된 총 339개의 표본을 분석한 결과 첫째, 감사인변경기업의 상장연도의 감사품질은 비변경기업과 비교하여 유의적인 차이가 없는 것으로 나타났다. 이는 감사인 자율교체 기업들이 덜 보수적인 감사인을 고용함으로써 보다 공격적인 회계처리를 수행하려는 경향이 있다는 선행연구(박수일·곽수근, 2007)와 일치하지 않은 결과로서, 국내 상장 외국기업처럼 상장연도 이후 일정 기간 동안의 감사인변경 제한 규정의 국내기업 적용 검토는 그 실증적 타당성을 발견하지 못 하였다. 둘째, 상장연도 감사인 비변경기업과 지정감사인 직전 감사인으로 변경한 총 284개의 표본을 대상으로 분석한 결과, 상장연도에 지정감사인 직전 감사인으로 변경한 기업의 상장직전연도의 감사품질이 상장연도 감사인 비변경기업과 비교하여 유의하게 높게 나타난 반면, 상장연도에는 유의한 차이를 발견하지 못 하였다. 이 결과는 지정감사인의 보다 강화된 감사 수행으로 인하여 경영자가 기회주의적으로 이익조정을 실시하지 못 한 점이 상장연도 감사인변경의 이유가 될 가능성을 보여주고 있고, 상장연도에 감사계약이 재개된 지정감사인 직전 감사인이 해당 기업이 비상장인 경우와는 달리 상장회사가 된 이후에는 상장연도에도 계속감사를 수행한 다른 지정감사인 수준의 감사품질을 제공하는 것으로 해석된다. 본 연구의 결과는 상장연도 감사인변경과 감사품질을 검토한 최초의 연구로서, 신규상장기업의 감사인지정제도와 관련하여 참고자료로 활용할 수 있을 것이다