감사인의 피감사회사에 대한 경제적 의존도가 감사인의 독립성에 미치는 영향 = Does Economic Fee Dependence on a Client Impair Auditor Independence?

국문 초록 (Abstract)

본 연구는 피감사회사에 대한 감사인의 경제적 의존도와 기업의 이익조정 정도간의 관련성을 분석하였다. 감사인은 고객기업으로부터 감사수수료를 받기 때문에 경제적 의존관계에서 자유로울 수 없다. 이러한 점은 감사보수의 금액크기만으로도 감사인의 독립성이 훼손될 수 있음을 의미한다. 만일 특정 고객의 회계감사 보수(혹은 비감사보수를 포함한 총보수)에 대한 감사인의 경제적 의존도가 높아짐에 따라 감사인과 경영자간에 타협의 가능성이 증가하여 감사인의 독립성이 훼손된다면, 해당 고객기업의 경영자는 재량적 발생을 이용하여 보고이익을 증가시킬 것으로 예상된다. 본 연구에서는 감사인의 경제적 의존도를 첫째, 회계법인별 매출액(혹은 회계감사 매출액) 대비 특정 피감사회사로부터 받은 감사보수 둘째, 회계법인별 매출액(혹은 회계감사 매출액) 대비 특정 피감사회사로부터 받은 총보수(=감사보수+비감사보수)로 측정하였다. 감사인의 독립성을 판단하는 측정치는 회계발생(accruals) 특히 재량적 발생을 이용하였으며, 그 추정과정은 수정된 Jones모형을 따랐다(Dechow et al., 1995). 실증분석결과, 감사보수 및 총보수로 측정한 감사인의 특정 고객기업에 대한 경제적 의존도와 피감사회사의 이익조정 사이에는 유의적인 관련성을 발견하지 못하였다. 이 결과는 민감도 분석결과에서도 일관되게 강건성이 있었으며, 감사 및 비감사서비스를 동시에 동일 감사인으로부터 구매한 기업들로 표본을 한정하여 분석하여 보아도 결론은 동일하였다. 즉 국내 감사시장에서 특정 고객에 대한 감사인의 경제적 의존도가 클수록 감사인의 독립성이 저해될 것이라는 주장을 뒷받침하는 증거를 발견할 수는 없었다.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study examines the relationship between the economic fee dependence of auditors on clients and earnings management of the clients. Auditor independence or audit quality has become the hottest issue in recent years since the collapse of Enron and Worldcom. This study examines how the auditor`s fee dependence on clients influences the auditor`s independence in allowing discretionary accruals of the clients. Thus, this study is expected to provide valuable insights into this issue on the Korean stock market as well as other developing countries. As long as auditors receive audit as well as non-audit fees from clients, auditors are dependent upon the clients. As a result, if the fee is too important for auditors to lose, auditor independence could be impaired. Auditors may be afraid of losing the clients who pay higher fees and compromise with those clients. Thus, the managers of the clients could manipulate earnings more easily in that case because auditors hesitate to restrict the managers` behavior, resulting in a positive association between earnings management and the economic fee dependence of auditors on clients. Although most prior studies only focus on non-audit fees examining this issue, the fee dependence problem could occur for clients who receive only audit service from auditors. For the Korean market, which is much smaller than that of the U.S. or other developed countries, this problem could be more serious because the number of clients per each auditor is much smaller than that of other countries, resulting in average higher fee dependence for auditors on clients. Thus, we expect that the results using the Korean data are more generalizable to other developing countries because the situations for auditors in those developing countries are more similar to the situation in Korea than that in U.S. or other developed countries. This study measures the economic fee dependence by the ratio of audit fee (or total fee including non-audit fee) paid by each client over total audit fee (or total fee) revenue of the auditors. The magnitude of the earnings management is proxied by accounting accruals (discretionary accruals, total accruals, discretionary current accruals, and current accruals) estimated by using the modified Jones model. The empirical results using Korean data collected from 1999 to 2001 suggest that economic fee dependence is not significantly associated with earnings management. The results are robust in various sensitivity analyses. This finding suggests that auditor independence in Korea may not be impaired even though fees from some clients are relatively important for auditors. The results are consistent with the findings in the studies that use the U.S.`s data.

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