감사위원회 활동성과 감사보고시차

Abstract

[Purpose]Although there have been a number of studies that have examined the effect of audit committee activity on auditing quality and earnings quality, no studies have investigated how audit committee activity influences auditing efficiency or audit effectiveness. The purpose of this study is to clarify the role of audit committee meeting frequency in corporate governance by verifying the relationship between audit committee activity and audit efficiency. [Methodology] The regression models were estimated to verify the relationship between audit committee activity and audit report lags. In addition, two-stage least squares (2SLS) was used to control potential endogeneity of this relationship. [Findings] The results showed that there was a significant and negative relationship between audit committee activity and audit report lags and this relationship was more pronounced for firms with mandatory audit committee. These results show that audit committee meeting frequency leads to audit efficiency because audit committee effectiveness is relatively increased in firms under regulatory pressure. Thus, audit committee meeting frequency seems to help limit managers’ opportunistic behavior in advance when firms are under high regulatory pressures. This relationship remains the same even after controlling for the potential endogeneity between audit committee activity and audit report lags. In addition, it was found that audit committee activity contributed to audit efficiency when the ratio of outside directors in the board was relatively higher and there was a continued auditor. Therefore, the audit committee is to enhance audit efficiency through interaction with internal and external monitoring bodies. [Implications]This study contributed to prior research by suggesting new evidence that audit committee activity positively affects audit efficiency rather than audit effectiveness.