국제회계기준이 보수주의 회계에 미친 영향에 대한 연구:조기 도입 기업을 대상으로

Starting from 2011, all listed firms in Korea are required to adopt IFRS. As the firms are given the option to adopt IFRS earlier than required, 57 firms have filed the financial statements according to IFRS since 2009. Aligning the Korean accounting standards with IFRS is aimed at enhancing the accounting transparency and improving the global investors' confidence in Korean capital markets by responding to the international convergence of accounting standards. Still, there exist divergent opinions on the impact of IFRS adoption. The prior literature investigating European companies that have already implemented IFRS shows different results across nations and companies. Hence, analyzing the Korean firms adopting IFRS early would provide useful insights for the future research and the policy development. This study empirically analyzes the impact of IFRS adoption on conservative accounting practices and the capital market reactions. IFRS uses fair value rather than historical cost as a major basis of measurement and is characterized by principle-based standards as opposed to rule-based standards. These characteristics of IFRS may increase the managerial discretion. Since the increased managerial discretion can lead to either increase or decrease of conservatism, the empirical examination of change in conservatism following IFRS adoption is an important issue. Despite the possible trade-off relation between fair value and conservatism, conservatism may increase under uncertain circumstances brought by fair value measurement. The role of conservatism in enhancing accounting transparency and reliability has been extended ever since Asian financial currency crisis in Korea. Thus, considering the historical, social background, conservatism can contribute to relieve uncertainty and improve transparency under IFRS. Firstly, given the possible movement of conservatism toward either direction, we examine how conservatism has changed from IFRS adoption by comparing post- IFRS adopters with the pre-IFRS adopters and/or non-adopters. Secondly, to gain insight into the investors' perception in conservatism, we examine whether IFRS adoption causes any change in the investors' reaction to conservatism. Our initial sample comprises the data of all Korean listed companies - both KOSPI and KOSDAQ companies, from 2007 to 2010, which yields the pooled samples of 4,948 and 5,805 firm-year observations for hypothesis 1 and 2, respectively. Additionally, the matched-control sample is used to better control for industry/size effects and sample size difference between post-IFRS adopters and pre- or non-adopters. We obtained the matched samples of 381 and 432 firm-year observations for hypothesis 1 and 2, respectively, by using the matching sampling method. Utilizing the excess operating profit model suggested in Feltham and Ohlson(1995), this study finds that conservatism has significantly increased after IFRS adoption. In particular, both pooled sample and matching sample show significant increases at the one percent level in conservatism after IFRS adoption. Voluntary adoption of IFRS may introduce sample selection bias. In other words, firms may have adopted IFRS voluntarily because of their own characteristics causing self-selection bias. In order to control for self-selection bias, Heckman(1979)'s 2SLS method is used. In order to control for possible endogeneity problem, this study uses a predicted value of IFRS adoption using instrumental variables and replace IFRS with this variable. In regards to the capital market response to the conservatism, we find that conservatism is significantly more positively related to price-earnings ratio under IFRS than under K-GAAP. This result is consistent across net income and excess earnings models suggested in Ohlson(1995) and excess operating income model suggested in Feltham and Ohlson(1995). Feltham and Ohlson(1995) measures conservatism as the difference between the market value and book value. This model follows a logic that market value exceeds net assets if firms understate net income or net assets. All three models provide significant results at the one percent levels, respectively, with both pooled and matching samples. The results of this study provide indirect evidence that IFRS increases accounting transparency and investors appreciate conservatism under IFRS. This study has its limitations in sampling since the findings are subject to the preliminary effect of voluntary IFRS adopters. However, in current situations where little study has been made on the effect of IFRS adoption in Korea, this study makes the initial effort to analyze the effect of IFRS regarding conservative accounting. This paper can be of useful assistance for capital market supervisors who are closely monitoring the actual trends of the firms implementing IFRS early in order to maximize the positive effects of IFRS adoption. Overall, this study has contributions to providing useful suggestions for not only the standard setters, investors, but also the firms facing the shift in standards.