동일 Big 4 감사인과 K-IFRS가 회계이익의 비교가능성에 미치는 영향

This study investigates whether the accounting earnings comparability of firm-pairs audited by the same Big 4 auditor is likely to be higher than that audited by the different auditors and whether the accounting earnings comparability is likely to increase after K-IFRS adoption. The results are as follows. First, we find that the comparability increases after K-IFRS adoption, which means that accountants and auditors try to develop internal "working rules" to standardize accounting practice to apply the principle-based accounting standards(Kothari et al. 2010). Second, we find that the comparability of firm-pairs audited by the same Big 4 auditor increase more than that audited by the different auditors after K-IFRS adoption, which suggests that Big 4 accounting firms invest more to implement their set of internal working rule after K-IFRS adoption. The implications of our study is that the comparability increases after K-IFRS adoption and the comparability of firm-pairs audited by the different Big 4 auditors increases as well as firm-pairs audited by the same Big 4 auditor. Therefore, K-IFRS, the principle-based accounting standards play a key role to improve the level of comparability. We also find that the comparability of firm-pairs audited by the same Big 4 auditor increase more than that audited by the different Big 4 auditors after K-IFRS adoption. Therefore, Big 4 accounting firms have their set of internal working rule according to the argument of Francis et al.(2014) and try more to enforce auditing standards and GAAP within their clienteles after K-IFRS adoption.