한국기업의 대리인 비용과 기업가치: 외국인 지분의 역할

We examine the relationship of foreign investors’ equity ownership, agency costs, and firm value using 4,721 firm-year observations of industrial firms listed in the Korea Stock Exchange between 1992 and 2001. A recent increase in foreign ownership may be viewed as a formation of competing block holders against domestic large block holders and owner managers. Foreign ownership of Korean firms has been very small and was not likely to affect firm’s decision until the Korean government opens the capital markets to the foreign investors in 1992. Since then, foreign ownership increases gradually and foreign institutional investors become more active investors after all the foreign investors’ ownership limitation is lifted in 1998. For instance, market capitalization owned by foreigners is 36.6% of total market capitalization in year 2001. In the same year, Korea Stock Exchange reports that foreigners own 43.16% of top 10 chaebol-affiliated firms in Korea. Because of increased ownership stake, foreign investors are more likely to become long-term and active investors as well as independent of the ultimate owners of the firm so that the agency costs and firm value are likely to be determined by foreign ownership. However, studies examining the role of foreign investors with regard to agency costs have not been sufficiently documented yet. This paper investigates the relation between foreign ownership and agency costs due to managerial moral hazard. Monitoring role of foreign investors would be more effective and the managerial agency costs would decrease as the foreign investors' equity ownership increases. An example of agency costs is the managerial perquisite consumption that depends on