원가의 하방경직성과 기업가치 간의 관계: 코로나 위기 기간을 중심으로

This study explored how market evaluated cost stickiness during COVID-19 era. If a manager considered the decline in sales due to the pandemic to be temporary and forecasted recovery in a short period of time, she would regard the adjustment cost when recovered is bigger than the cost of maintaining committed resource and keep idle resources, which leads to the cost stickiness. If market views the cost stickiness as insider information, the cost stickiness would be in a positive relationship with firm value. On the other hand, if the market predicts long-term depression due to the continued emergence of new COVID variants, the cost stickiness would be considered as an inefficient decision derived from agency problem and have a negative effect on the firm value. According to our study, the cost stickiness has a positive relationship with Tobin's Q, and it became strengthened during COVID-19 period. The enhanced positive relationship indicates that the cost stickiness is advantageous for recovery in sales. This is supported by the fact that the strengthened relationship is mainly induced by non-manufacturing firms and KOSDAQ listed firms. The KOSDAQ listed firms with high R&D ratio would benefit from the cost stickiness due to higher adjustment costs when sales recover. In addition, non-manufacturing firms including service industry companies experienced significant demand shocks, which means the recovery is relatively more important. This study researched how market evaluates the cost stickiness and verified that the cost stickiness has the information effect on the manager's expectation of increased future earnings. Our results imply that market puts more value on future earnings than earning for the current year and that the cost sticky firms have an advantage in recovering from COVID-19.