한국과 미국의 감사보수 수준 비교 연구

The current study investigates if audit fees in Korea can be comparable to the ones in the United States. Before the financial crisis in 1997, audit fees were determined by the procedures that the Korean Institute of Certified Public Accountants (KICPA) provided. Since 1997, audit fees are determined by the auditor and auditee in the market. However, there are serious concerns on audit quality after the fees are determined through the market mechanism (Kwon et al., 2001; Noh et al., 2008). In general, audit fees are expected to be positively associated with audit quality. However, there is few research that analyzes audit fees in Korea. Especially there is no systematic analysis on audit fees by comparing with ones in the United States, in which there is a relatively effective and efficient market system to determine audit fees. Analyzing the fee data from 2002 to 2012 in Korea and in the United States, we found that the fees in Korea is equivalent to 29% (27%) of the U.S. fees when we used the fee measure based on the total assets (total revenue). When we estimate the expected fees based on the regression model, we found that the actual fees are only 22% of the expected fees. Our study does not examine the direct association between the lower fees in Korea and audit quality. Instead, by analyzing the current fee status of audit market, we provide a fundamental to call future research on the relationship.