우리나라 회계감사시장의 구조와 감사인 집중수준에 대한 연구: 우리나라 주권상장기업과 코스닥상장기업을 대상으로

초록

Audit market for public companies is characterized as a highly concentrated market since few auditors examine most public companies. Many countries have been concerned about highly concentrated audit markets and have examined their audit market structures to evaluate the unduly influence of few auditors on the market. In late 1990s Korean major auditors have undergone into merging and dissolution and thus the audit market was expected to be more highly concentrated. No studies have addressed Korean audit market structure and the changes of audit market concentration since then. Thus we conduct a study to examine Korean audit market structure and to evaluate the auditor concentration for public companies listed on Korea Stock Exchange(KSE) or Korea Securities Dealers Automated Quotation(KOSDAQ) market. Analysis for the audit market as a whole shows that Korean audit market for public companies has already been highly concentrated since late 1990s though the concentration is relatively low compared to those of USA, Britain, Australia. Further analysis for the segmental audit markets of individual industries reveals that more than half of 15 industries examined are very highly concentrated. Nevertheless, the increase of audit market concentration during late 1990s through 2004 was not significant. These findings suggest that Korean audit market was already highly concentrated in late 1990s and thus the concentration progressed little, if any. However, Top 4 auditors or Big 5 auditors are presumably to have increased their market shares by channeling their audit services to relatively large companies or to large industries. We find that Korean audit market for public companies are highly concentrated. We also provide that Top 4 auditors or Big 5 auditors have gained more market shares in relatively large companies or industries. These findings together suggest that companies in the demand side of audit services, especially large companies or companies in highly concentrated industries should be greatly restricted to their choice of auditors.

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