국제회계기준(IFRS)의 도입과 감사시간 및 감사보수

As the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) have been adopted in Korea in full scale, this study analyzes whether auditors of Korea’s listed companies allocate additional audit hours and request additional fees for such audits. Since the adoption of the IFRS, client firms can choose from a wider range of accounting processes and manage their earnings more effectively, compared with the previous Financial Accounting Standards. Range of accounting choices is wider and likelihood of earnings management is higher with the adoption of the IFRS. Therefore auditors allocate additional audit hours and request additional fees for the reliability of financial statements. To test the hypothesis, data on firms listed on the Korean Stock Exchange and the KOSDAQ in 2009(before the adoption of the IFRS) and 2011(after the adoption of the IFRS) were used as the samples. To minimize the effect of the early adoption of the IFRS on the study result, data for 2010 were not analyzed. If there were increases in the audit hours and fees between 2009 and 2011, it can be concluded that the hypothesis is being supported. The result of analysis shows that auditors spend more time in auditing since the IFRS was adopted in Korea. This is because client firms can choose from a wider range of accounting methods and their demand for the specialized knowledge from auditors have increased, which have resulted from the shift from rule-based Financial Accounting Standards to the principles-based IFRS. The IFRS resulted in an increase in the audit fees as well as the audit hours. However, it was discovered that the adoption of the IFRS had no effect on the audit fees considering the inflation rate. In other words, it can be identified that auditors spend extra audit hours but do not receive remuneration. In the same context, it was found that audit fees per hour experienced a fall since the IFRS was adopted. Same results were obtained in analyses which used change variables of audit hours, fees, and audit fees per hour. The insignificant effect of the IFRS adoption on audit fees means that competition between auditors has become fierce since the adoption of the free audit engagement system. Also, the decrease in audit fees per hour since the adoption of the IFRS implies that requests for audit fee increase are not properly accepted although the accounting standard changes resulted in increases in audit hours. In other words, because of the fierce competition among auditors, the increase in audit hours could not lead to increases in audit fees. While previous studies analyzed the effects of client firms’ individual characteristics on audit hours and fees, this study examined the effects of accounting standard changes on audit hours and fees. Moreover, by analyzing the circumstances of Korea which adopted the IFRS before the economically developed nations such as the US and Japan, this study suggests empirical evidence on how the principles-based IFRS affects the audit environment. In particular, while previous studies only examined the IFRS’ effects from the perspective of capital markets, this study analyzed these effects from the perspective of auditors. This will provide great implications for auditors, client firms and supervisory institutions.