투자의사결정 시 외국인 투자자는 감사품질을 고려하는가?

This study investigates whether foreign investors consider audit quality in Korea Stock Market. According to prior researches, firms in KOSDAQ have many asymmetry information more than firms listed in Korea Securities Exchange. Foreign investors are more difficult to collect information than Local investors. Because of information asymmetry, all most of foreign investors make a decision based on the firms' public finance statement. If the firms' information is distorted, foreign investors could not make a rational decision. Therefore, when making a decision, foreign investors will importantly consider audit quality. Because audit quality can improve reliability of financial information and decrease the information asymmetry. To test the prediction, we utilize audit hours, audit fees and auditor size as proxies of audit quality. The data of audit hours are 5,904(audit fee: 5,916, audit size: 7,110) firm-year observations from 2001 to 2006 period. The sample firms are all listed in Korea Stock Market and all of sample firms do not belong to banking industry. The empirical findings are as bellows. First, the firms with longer audit hours and higher audit fees have higher foreign ownership than others. Second, the big audit firms have significantly higher foreign ownership than others. These results suggest that foreign investors consider audit quality importantly on making the investment decision. Third, compared to listed firms in Korea Securities Exchange, listed firms in KOSDAQ indicate that the positive relation between audit quality (audit hours, audit fees, auditor size)and foreign ownership is stronger. These results imply that foreign investors consider more seriously the audit quality of firms in KOSDAQ than firms in Korea Securities Exchange. In the raising the interest of foreign investment, the results of this study can provide beneficial information to the academic and administrative work.