감사위원회 및 이사회의 특성차이가 보수주의에 미치는 영향

This study examines the impact of the improved structures of audit committee and board of directors on the accounting conservatism as characterized by asymmetric timeliness in recognizing good versus bad news in accounting earnings. While prior studies examined the association between committees and discretionary accruals(Klein 2000, 2002; Lee and Lee 2003), or committees and its impact on firm value(La Porta et al. 1998, 1999, 2000; Shleifer and Vishny 1997; Vafeas 1999), this paper represents, to our knowledge, the only known Korean study delving into the empirical relations between committee characteristics and accounting conservatism. Using a sample of 1,950 firm－year observations over the period of 2000－2004, we conduct several regression analyses to investigate the potential relation between the level of conservatism and the level of improved governance structure measured by factor scores representing audit committee and board of director characteristics. The results of the analyses show that firms with an improved board committee, appear to be more conservative, in the sense of more timely recognition of bad news. This evidence is consistent with the fact that the structure of board of directors plays an important role in determining the attribute of the accounting information. In sum, improved structure of board of directors is associated with higher level of accounting conservatism.