경제적 불확실성이 연구개발비 회계처리와 연구개발비 지출의 기업가치 관련성에 미치는 영향

[Purpose] Even under economic uncertainty, research and development (R&D) investment is one of the main sources of corporate survival and success. However it is possible that management’s subjective judgment is involved in the R&D accounting treatment. Therefore it’s important to identify whether managers has made reasonable decisions, especially under economic uncertainty. This study tries to identify whether managers utilize R&D accounting as a means of profit adjustment, when economic uncertainty increases, and also how R&D expenditure affects firm value relevance in the midst of economic uncertainty. [Methodology] We conduct an empirical analysis of firms listed on the securities and KOSDAQ markets from 2001 to 2021. We use WUI to measure economic uncertainty, which is calculated by using text data by Ahir et al.(2018). [Findings] We find managers prefer to capitalized R&D when economic uncertainty increases. Also, investors perceive expensed R&D negatively in the midst of economic uncertainty, and capitalized R&D has no significant impact on stock market. This result is robust when we use dummy variable based on median value of WUI. We then divide the sample into R&D investment above 0.01%, 0.1% and 0.5% of total capital, and find that investors also react negatively to R&D capitalization in samples with R&D investment more than 0.5% of capital. [Implication] This study contributes the literature and regulators by identifying the effect of economic uncertainty on managers’ R&D accounting decision－making process and the effect of economic uncertainty on investors’ investment decisions on R&D expenditures. It also help investors on future investment decisions regarding to the R&D expenditure.