경영자 능력과 감사노력 및 감사보수 프리미엄의 관계

The Relation among Managerial Ability, Audit Effort, and Audit Fee Premium

본 연구는 경영자 능력과 감사인의 노력(감사시간) 및 감사 보수 프리미엄(시간당 감사보수)의 관계를 분석한다. 실증분석결과 경영자 능력이 우수한 경우 감사보수와 감사시간이 감소하지만 시간당 감사보수와는 유의한 관계가 없었다. 따라서 감사인은 경영자 능력이 우수한 기업에 대해서는 감사위험이 낮은 것으로 판단하여 투입 노력을 줄이지만 위험 프리미엄에 영향을 주지는 않는 것으로 밝혀졌다. 즉, 감사인은 경영자 능력 차이에 따른 감사위험을 감사노력으로 통제가능한 위험으로 여기고 있는 것으로 추정된다. 본 연구를 통해 감사인들의 위험평가 및 감사절차에 대한 이해가 높아질 것으로 기대된다.

This study examines the effect of managerial ability to audit fees, audit hours and unit audit price. Audit fees are decreasing in managerial ability because able managers improves the firm performance and lowers the risk of firm failure. However, it is not known how the auditors of the firm with a able manger will benefit in return for the low audit fee. This study examines the effects of managerial ability to audit efforts(i.e., audit hours) and audit fee premium(i.e., unit audit price) based on the fact that audit fees are composed of audit hours and unit audit price to answer this question. We find that auditors reduce audit fees and audit hours when they audit firms with high managerial ability and find no evidence that managerial ability is related with unit audit price. These results suggest that auditors of high managerial ability firm appear to reduce not unit audit price but audit effort. Furthermore, we find no evidence that managerial ability are related to audit fee, audit hours and unit audit price in new hired manger subsamples which managerial ability information is not available. We contribute to the audit literature by establishing a negative relation between managerial ability and audit hours, which means auditors lower their efforts for the firms with high managerial ability. We suggest that understanding auditor effort behavior with managerial ability may provide valuable information to audit practitioners, regulators since manager’s ability may affect audit fees and audit hours.