감사위원회 독립성과 감사품질의 관련성－외부감사인 규모의 매개효과와 대리인문제의 조절효과를 중심으로－

This paper examines the relationship between audit committee independence and audit quality which is measured by auditor size and audit fees. Thus, this study tries to empirically answer the following two research questions: (1) Does audit size play a mediating role in the relationship between audit committee independence and audit fees? (2) Do agency problems influence the association between audit committee independence and audit fees? To address two research question, we collect 1,108 non- financing firm-year data of Korean listed companies adopting audit committees for the period of 2000 to 2010. Our empirical findings are as follows. First, we find that audit committee independence has a positive impact on auditor size, thereby increasing audit fees. These results are consistent with our conjecture that auditor size plays an important mediating role in the association between audit committee independence and audit fees. Second, the association between audit committee independence and audit fees is significantly higher for non-owner-controlled firms than owner-controlled ones. In addition, the relationship between audit committee independence and audit fees is significantly greater for firms belong to the business group called “Chaebol” than firms that do not belong to any business group. These results of this paper help to provide evidence on the mediating role of auditor size in the association between audit committee independence and audit fees. Our results also can help regulatory bodies to set up guidelines for formation and implementation of audit committee.