자산화되는 연구개발지출이 감사인 노력에 미치는 영향

Abstract

This study examines whether capitalized research and development(R&D) expenditure has an effect on the audit effort of external auditors using the audit hours by rank, and whether this effect differs by auditor size. R&D expenditure is reported as an asset if certain criteria are met, otherwise it is reported as an expense. However, there is a possibility of earnings management as discretionary judgment could be involved in the practical application of accounting standards. Accordingly, if capitalized R&D expenditure is high, it is expected that the auditor will consider it as an audit risk and increase the audit effort. Compared to non-Big4 auditors, Big4 auditors will have a clearer response to capitalized R&D expenditure because Big4 auditors have relatively large losses in the event of audit failure and have a large number of manpower.
 The non-financial listed companies that can be collected from the TS2000 and KISVALUE are analyzed. The period of analysis is from 2014 to 2017, and the data set contains 5,884 firm-years.
 As a result of empirical analysis, capitalized R&D expenditure is positively associated with total audit hours, partner audit hours, and registered CPA audit hours. And this effect is evident in the sample of Big4 auditors. These results suggest that the auditors judge capitalized R&D expenditure as an audit risk factor and respond to it, and this response is prominent in the Big 4 auditors.
 This paper has contributions in that it expands the previous research by analyzing the effect of R&D expenditure on auditors' audit hours by rank. In addition, through separate analyzes of the Big4 auditor sample and the non-Big4 auditor sample, the evidence is provided that the effect of R&D expenditure on audit efforts varies depending on the auditor size.