기업수명주기가 감사보수에 미치는 영향

Effect of Corporate Life Cycle on Audit Fees

본 연구는 기업수명주기가 감사보수에 어떠한 영향을 미치는지 분석하고자 한다. 이와 같은 연구목적을 수행하기 위해 2000년부터 2013년까지의 미국 상장기업을 이용하였으며 분석결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 기업수명주기에 따라 감사보수는 달라지는 결과를 보여 기업수명주기는 감사보수에 통계적으로 유의한 영향을 행사한다는 결과를 제시하고 있다. 둘째, 감사인은 그 어떤 기업수명주기보다도 경영위험이 높은 성숙기 기업에 높은 감사보수를 제시하는 것을 발견하였다. 본 연구는 기업수명주기가 감사보수에 중요한 결정요인이라는 결과를 제시하였다는 공헌점이 존재한다. 본 연구의 결과는 실무를 담당하는 감사인이 감사보수를 측정하는데 도움이 될 것으로 기대한다.

This study analyzes the relationship between corporate life cycle and audit fees. Based on corporate life cycle studies (Miller and Friesen, 1984; Dickinson, 2011), corporate life cycle can help auditors to assess and understand client s business risk: what types of corporate governance structures would be effective, what types of internal control deficiencies would have and what types of ownership structures would have, etc. (Filatotchev et al. 2006; Filatotchev, 2008). The life cycle literatures imply that client in mature stage have higher business risk compared to other stages of corporate life cycle (Kallunki and Silvola, 2008) and auditors are more likely to charge higher audit fees to client with high business risk (Venkataraman et al., 2008; Stanley, 2011). Thus, we predict that corporate life cycle of clients would play a significant role when auditors evaluate client business risk. In particular, we hypothesize that auditors would charge higher audit fees to mature firms due to higher business risk. The empirical analyses of this study are based on firm-year observations from 2000 to 2013 in the U.S and we adopt Dickinson (2011)’s measurement of corporate life cycle. As predicted, we find that corporate life cycle plays a significant role in determining audit fees even we control for other firm characteristics. Specifically, we find that auditors charge higher audit fees to mature firms, whereas auditors charge lower audit fees to growth firms. This evidence is consistent with Bell et al. (2001) where auditors assess client business risk at the firm level, then pass their expected costs to the risky client in the form of higher audit fees.