재무제표의 비교가능성과 감사보고시차의 관계

This study examines whether financial statement comparability enhances the timeliness of audited financial reporting, as reflected in audit report lag (the number of days from fiscal year-end to the auditor’s signature date). Building on the idea that comparability reduces information acquisition and processing costs, we predict that firms whose accounting outputs are easier to map onto peers’ reports allow auditors to assess risks, target procedures, and corroborate evidence more efficiently, thereby shortening the time required to issue the audit report. Using Korean listed firms over 2017–2020, we operationalize comparability with the De Franco, Kothari, and Verdi (2011) approach and implement empirical models in which audit report lag is the dependent variable and comparability is the main explanatory variable, alongside standard controls and year and industry fixed effects. To mitigate simultaneity and measurement concerns, we construct comparability using information up to the third quarter and winsorize variables at conventional cutoffs; financial statement data come from DataGuide and audit dates from the Financial Supervisory Service’s DART system. The analyses yield three principal findings. First, comparability is negatively associated with audit report lag, consistent with auditors leveraging cross-firm similarities to understand the client more quickly, benchmark unusual items, and concentrate testing on salient risks. Second, this relation is robust to alternative comparability proxies, including measures based on the extent to which peer firms’ earnings explain the focal firm’s earnings, indicating that the result is not an artifact of a single construction or sampling choice. Third, we find meaningful heterogeneity by auditor size: interactions between comparability and an indicator for Big 4 audit firms are positive, implying that the time-saving benefit of comparability is attenuated for Big 4 engagements. A plausible interpretation is that Big 4 auditors—operating under stricter firm-wide methodologies, consultation requirements, and higher assurance targets—continue to invest incremental effort even when the client’s reporting is highly comparable, partially offsetting efficiency gains. These results contribute to two literatures. For research on comparability, we identify a concrete audit outcome—reporting timeliness after year-end—through which reporting properties affect real assurance activity. For the audit literature, we document that a key attribute of the financial reporting environment helps explain variation in audit report lag beyond traditional drivers related to client size, performance, risk, and loss indicators. From a policy and practice perspective, the evidence suggests that initiatives that raise comparability can produce tangible efficiency benefits in audit production and accelerate the public release of audited information—benefits that may be moderated where auditors pursue especially stringent assurance thresholds. More broadly, the findings underscore the dual role of comparability as informational infrastructure for external users and as operational infrastructure for auditors, shaping both how quickly markets receive audited financial statements and how audit teams plan and execute procedures. Collectively, the study highlights comparability as a salient determinant of post-fiscal-year reporting timeliness and clarifies when and why its benefits may vary across engagement settings.