히든챔피언의 내부 및 외부지배구조에 따른 무형자산성 지출의 가치관련성

This study investigated the value relevance of intangible expenditures according to internal and external corporate governance of Korean hidden champion firms. First, this paper analyzed the value relevance of internal and external corporate governance for all KOSDAQ market listed manufacturing and IT firms. Then, this study analyzed differences in the value relevance of internal and external corporate governance between hidden champion firms and control firms selected by the propensity score matching(PSM) method corresponding to the hidden champion firms. Hidden champion samples were selected from the annual list of hidden champion firms announced by the Korea Exchange. Further, this study performed in-depth analysis on whether intangible expenditures according to internal and external corporate governance of hidden champion firms significantly increased their firm values using the two-stage least squares(2SLS) method. The results of the study are as follows: First of all, the internal corporate governance variables(number of the board of directors, proportion of outside directors among the board of directors and the largest shareholders’ holdings) as well as the external corporate governance variables(whether being audited by Big4 auditors, market dominance, borrowing ratio from financial institutions and foreign investor ownership) of KOSDAQ market listed manufacturing and IT firms were significantly associated with the firm values. Moreover, the value relevance of internal and external corporate governance variables were found to be significantly different between hidden champion firms and control firms. In particular, the firm values of hidden champion firms significantly increased compared to control firms when the largest shareholders’ holdings were higher. The result shows contrasting aspect to the traditional point of view that maintaining a relatively lower level of the largest shareholders’ holdings results in better corporate governance. Lastly, the internal and external corporate governance of hidden champion firms affected intangible asset expenditures, and the firm values were increased significantly. This study contributes that it is the first study to analyze the association between value relevance and corporate governance of hidden champion firms. In addition, this study comprehensively analyzed the value relevance and corporate governance by considering the external corporate governance variables as well as the internal corporate governance variables in research models. Specifically, the results of comparative analysis between hidden champion firms and control firms suggest that regulations and systems related to corporate governance need to be differentiated between hidden champion firms and other firms. Further, the results of this study confirms the practical importance of intangible expenditures in addition to the internal and external corporate governance, as high level of internal and external corporate governance increases firm values through the expansion of intangible expenditures.