이익의 질과 영향요인의 산업별 추세

This study examines the effect of the change in regulatory environment and economic factors on earnings quality of firms in five target industries, including finance, pharmaceuticals, steel, electronic components and software. Following prior studies, we identify firm size, loss, one-time items, and intangible expenditures as four key factors to investigate over-time trend of value relevance, revenue-expense matching, and earnings volatility for recent eighteen-year period. We find that firm size is increasing over time in all the target industries and that the percentage of loss firms is decreasing (increasing) in the finance (pharmaceuticals and electronic components) industries. Earnings quality in the finance industry is primarily affected by the IFRS adoption while the effect of one-time items on earnings quality varies across target industries, depending on the components of one-time items. Research and development expenditures affect earnings quality mainly for research and development intensive industries. The overall effect of firm size and loss on earnings quality has weakened over time, and the impact of one-time items and research and development expenditures has become more differential across industries. This suggests that earnings quality is affected by unidentified factors other than the four factors examined or that the traditional role of the four factors is changing over time. This study contributes to literature by comparing the trend of earnings quality across target industries and the relative role of regulation environment and economic factors in explaining earnings quality.