기업의 위치와 재무제표의 비교가능성

Firm Location and Financial Statement Comparability

대도시 또는 기타 지역에 위치하고 있는지와 관련된 기업의 입지는 기업에 대한 이해관계자의 감시(monitoring) 정도나 시장압력(market pressure)의 차이를 가져와 기업의 의사결정에 영향을 미칠 수 있다. 기업이 대도시에 위치할수록 주요 감독기구나 투자자들이 감시･감독하기 용이하며, 기업에 대한 많은 정보를 획득할 수 있기 때문에 정보불균형이 낮아질 수 있다. 반면 기업이 대도시에 위치 할수록 시장의 높아진 관심과 압력에 대응하기 위해 이익조정을 할 유인이 많아지고, 이를 숨기고자 하는 과정에서 재무보고의 투명성이 낮아질 수 있다. 2004년부터 2016년까지 국내 주식시장에 상장되어 있는 기업들을 대상으로 분석한 결과, 본사가 서울 및 수도권 지역에 위치한 기업들이 기타 지역에 위치한 기업들보다 재무제표의 비교가능성이 높다는 점을 발견하였다. 이는 서울 및 수도권 지역에 위치한 기업들의 입지가 시장압력적 측면보다 감독용이적 측면에서 더 큰 영향을 미쳐 이들 기업의 재무보고의 투명성을 높이고 있음을 보여준다.

This study examines the effect of firms’ geographic locations on their financial statements comparability. We argue that whether a firm is located in metropolitan area or not can have an impact on the firm’s financial statement comparability. There are two different perspectives regarding the linkage between firm location and financial statement comparability based on prior literature. One is the monitoring perspective. When a firm is located in a metropolitan area, the firm’s geographic proximity to outside stakeholders can reduce the costs of obtaining information on the firm. Thus information asymmetry is reduced. Because of this reduced information asymmetry, outside stakeholders including investors can more directly monitor the management’s behavior, leading to increased financial statement comparability. The other is the market pressure perspective. Firms located in metropolitan areas are likely to grab more attention from investors and analysts compared to firms that are not. Since the attention of investors and analysts can put excess pressure on managers of firms in metropolitan areas, manager of these firms can have more incentive to act opportunistically (e.g. manage earnings) to meet the market expectation. And to hide their opportunistic behavior, managers will have very little incentive to increase the comparability of their financial statements. For the analyses, we used 14,199 firm-year observations from companies listed in the Korean stock market from year 2004 to 2016, and firm location is measured by an indicator variable representing whether the firm s headquarter is located in the Seoul metropolitan area or not. We find that firms located in the Seoul metropolitan area are more likely to report financial statements with high comparability, compared to firms that are not. These findings suggest that the monitoring effects dominate the market pressure effects. These findings are robust even after using alternative measures for firm location proxy and addressing endogeneity. Overall, we document the evidence of how a firm’s geographic proximity to outside stakeholders generates a monitoring effect, and thus leads to ncreased financial statement comparability. Our findings contribute to accounting literature since accounting research on firm location is relatively rare, especially those based on Korean evidence. We also contribute to the literature on financial statement comparability. By using measures developed by DeFranco et al.(2011), our study will help improve our understanding on how such measure of financial statement comparability is used. Finally, our findings show that firm location influences information asymmetry between the manager and the outside stakeholders, and as a result, has impact on firms’ behavior. Our study should interest regulators, auditors, and investors by suggesting that they should pay more attention to firms not located in metropolitan areas when monitoring them.