회계법인의 수로 측정한 감사시장의 경쟁 수준이 감사보수 및 감사시간에 미치는 영향

초록

The effect of the audit market competition on auditor behavior and audit outcomes has been a great interest of many related parties, such as regulators, academics, practitioners, and client firms. However, no consensus has yet been reached on how to measure the intensity of competition. Following Ha et al. (2018), this study employs the number of auditors providing audit service in an industry-year as a proxy for audit market competition, and investigates how the competition influences audit fees, audit hours and audit fees per audit hour. With the sample of 14,234 firm-year observations during the period from 2005 to 2016, our empirical analyses reveal the following. First, the intensity of audit market competition is negatively associated with audit fees. Second, the intensive competition leads to lower audit fees per audit hour, while it does not affect audit hours. Given Ha et al.’s (2018) finding that audit quality is negatively associated with the level of competition, our findings suggest that because of intense competition, auditors are likely to lower audit fees per hour as well as audit fees, which may in turn impair audit quality. These findings provide various interested parties with invaluable insights into the effect of audit market competition.

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