코스닥 기업 경영자의 횡령과 원가의 하방경직성

Management’s embezzlement and malpractice(hereafter, ‘misappropriation’) can be a critical agency problem in KOSDAQ market. This paper aims to investigate directly the association between KOSDAQ firms’ misappropriation by management and the cost stickiness. Misappropriation by management is proxy for agency problem in this paper. To analyze empirically, we selected a sample of 146 KOSDAQ firms that occurs misappropriation by management during 2004-2012, and organized the triple matching sample by year, by industry, and by size. The empirical results are as follows. First, Costs are more stickier in firms of misappropriation by management than in the other firms in KOSDAQ market. Second, Cost stickiness differs depending on characteristics of misappropriation and level of its disclosure in firms of misappropriation by management. In other words, the larger the amount of misappropriation, the more conspiracy, and the larger time difference from occurrence to disclosure in the firms of misappropriation by management was further enhanced stickiness of costs. Although Anderson et al.(2003) and many previous studies have expected the possible logic that cost stickiness cause from agency problem, few have empirically examined the association between agency problem and the cost stickiness. This study empirically shows that sticky costs related to agency problem focusing on misappropriation by management. This empirical results contributes to the literature on sticky cost behavior by discussing critical issues associated to the extant approach of empirical analysis and interpretation of sticky cost behavior.