IFRS 도입이 회계의 질에 미친 영향과 경제적 효과: 문헌검토와 미래연구에 대한 제안

The objective of this paper is to review the previous studies on the adoption of IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) and to suggest future research directions. Two kinds of studies are selected and critically reviewed in this paper. One group of papers investigates whether the adoption of IFRS improves accounting quality and the other group examines whether the application of IFRS incurs the economic consequences. The results of the former group of papers indicate that accounting quality is not significantly affected by the adoption of IFRS itself but by many other factors such as firms’ incentives, strength of legal enforcement level, and institutional changes with the adoption of IFRS. The papers on the economic consequences provide evidence that the application of IFRS lead to higher market liquidity, reduced information asymmetry, enhanced information environment, increased capital flows across borders, and lower costs of capital. Although many studies have been done in Europe and U.S., only a few studies begin to investigate the effect of IFRS on the accounting quality and economic consequences in Korea. Limited studies in Korea find that earnings management is reduced and value relevance of accounting numbers increased following the adoption of IFRS. A few conceptual and methodological limitations are found in many IFRS studies such as self-selection bias, logical gap in research hypothesis, lack of controls for the characteristics of firms, short-term perspectives, and heavy reliance on the commercial database. Adopting IFRS is an important avenue going towards globalization of the accounting standards and practice in Korea. We need to devote our effort in complying with IFRS to improve the reliability of accounting information and to lower costs of capital of Korean firms.