감사인의 산업별 전문화와 감사품질 : 전기손익수정 및 감리지적을 중심으로

With the increased importance of accounting information in the capital markets, the quality of financial reporting is of interest to investors, creditors and many other interested parties. In particular, the role of external auditors becomes more crucial in improving the quality of financial reporting. The audit quality could be defined as a joint probability to detect and report errors and irregularities in financial statements. Industry specialist auditors are expected to provide higher quality audit than non industry specialists. There are few prior studies examining the association between auditors’ industry specialization and audit quality mainly because the proxies for audit quality are not fully understood and identified. Using the proxies of financial reporting quality as an indirect measure of audit quality and a relatively direct measure of audit quality, we examine the association between auditor industry specialization and audit quality. The empirical results show that the industry specialization reduces the amount of errors and the likelihood of failures of detecting errors. Using a more direct measure of audit quality, we find that it is less likely for industry specialist auditors to be penalized by the Financial Supervisory Services for audit failures. The empirical evidence is generally consistent with our expectation that industry specialist auditors provide higher quality audit services than non industry specialist auditors.