본 연구는 연결감사품질을 결정하는 요인으로 타감사인 의존도와 연결감사업무의 복잡성에 관하여 분석하였다. 연결회사 감사인과 종속회사의 감사인이 서로 일치하지 않을 경우, 감사인간 의사소통의 효율성이 저하되어 감사현장에서 발견된 회계적 이슈나 감사위험에 대한 정보의 공유 및 지식의 이전효과를 기대하기 어렵게 된다. 따라서 타감사인의 의존도가 높을수록 연결감사품질은 하락할 것이다. 연결재무제표는 연결회사와 종속회사를 통합하여 하나의 경제적 실체로 표현하 는 과정이므로, 종속회사가 많아지거나 연결회사간 내부거래가 증가할수록 연결과정은 복잡해지고 정보비대칭성은 증가할 수 있다. 따라서 연결감사업무의 복잡성이 증가할수록 연결감사품질은 하락할 것으로 예상된다. 본 연구에서는 타감사인 의존정도는 연결재무제표 중에서 타감사인이 감사한 총자산비중, 매출액비중 및 타감사인 수를 이용하여 측정하였으며, 연결감사업무의 복잡성을 종속회사 수, 연결회사간 내부거래의 규모 및 이로 인한 채권?채무의 규모로 측정하였다. 연결감사품질을 판단하는 측정치는 성과조정 재량적 발생액(performance-adjusted discretionary accruals)을 이용하였다. 실증분석시 연결재무제표에 나타나는 특수한 요인들만을 고려하기 위해서 개별재무제표에서 계 산한 개별 기업의 감사품질을 통제한 후 분석을 수행하였다. 실증분석 결과 타감사인이 감사한 총자산비중 및 매출액비중과 타감사인 수는 재량적 발생액과 유의한 양(+)의 회귀계수 를 보였다. 또한 종속회사의 수 역시 재량적 발생액과 유의한 양(+)의 회귀계수를 나타내어, 예측과 일치하는 결과를 얻 었다. 다만, 연결회사간 내부거래의 규모 및 채권?채무의 규모는 재량적 발생액과 유의한 관계를 보이지 않았다.
This paper investigates the determinants of audit quality of consolidated financial statements. Given that International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) will be introduced to Korea starting from year 2011 and IFRS mandate the use of consolidated financial statements, it would be very important to examine the audit quality of the consolidated financial statements. Up to now, there has been no research at all in Korea which investigates this issue because not consolidated but non-consolidated (i.e., individual) financial statements have been used as primary financial statements. The audit quality is a very important issue in Korean situation which tries hard to enhance corporate transparency and, thus, attracts more local and foreign investments into capital market.This study makes two predictions on the determinants of the audit quality of consolidated financial statements. First, in audit work for consolidated financial statements, the parent company’s auditor may be different from subsidiaries’auditors. In such a case, the auditor of parent company needs to depend on the audits of subsidiary companies performed by another auditors in order to consolidate the financial statements of subsidiaries into those of parent company. In such a case, efficient and effective communications between them could be more difficult. Thus, it might be less expected that information sharing and knowledge spillover occurs during the audit procedures if several different auditors are related to the audit of subsidiary companies. As a results, we expect that the more dependence on other auditors decreases the audit quality of consolidated financial statements.Second, consolidated financial statements represent the parent company and its subsidiaries as one economic entity and, therefore, the complexity of consolidation itself and information asymmetry between the parent company’auditor and its subsidiaries’auditors would increase in proportion with the total number of subsidiaries or the magnitude of transactions between the parent company and subsidiaries or among subsidiaries. So, we expect that the more complexity in consolidation processes decreases the audit quality of consolidated financial statements.This paper measures the dependence on other auditors is measure by the portion of total assets (or sales) audited by other auditors and the number of other auditors. The complexity of consolidation is measured by the total number of subsidiaries or the magnitude of transactions or account receivables and account payables between the parent company and subsidiaries or among subsidiaries. Finally, we employ discretionary accruals estimated by using performance- adjusted modified Jones model (Kasznik 1999; Kothari et al. 2005) in order to proxy for the audit quality. This measure has been used in various prior studies to proxy for accounting or audit quality. This measure has relative advantage compared with other possible measure of audit quality - such as audit opinion, post audit review, or earnings restatement - because this is the only measure that can be applied to general sample of firms whereas other measures are applicable to only a few firms which could be classified into outliers among general samples. In addition, during empirical analyses, we control for the audit quality of individual financial statements in order to emphasize the determinants of consolidated financial statements. For the empirical analyses, we use 1,537 firm-year observations collected over the period from year 2002 to year 2006. These are the firm-year observations that issue both individual and consolidated financial statements and those with all the necessary data are available from KIS-Value Ⅱ database. We perform both univariate and multivariate regression analyses.Empirical results show that the dependence measures (the portion of total assets or sales which are audited by other auditors and the number of other auditors) have significantly positive coefficients. In addition, the total number of subsidiaries of complexity measures have significantly positive coefficients but the magnitude of transactions and the magnitude of account receivables and account payables have insignificant coefficients. Thus, these significant variables are turn out to be the determinants of the accounting quality of consolidated financial statements.The findings in this study are interesting and important. It is expected that the findings in this study provide valuable insights and helpful to policy-makers, academics, practitioners, firms, as well as individual and institutional investors. For the most of all, this study shows what determines the quality of consolidated financial statements and, thus, provide insights into the possible way to improve the quality. Given that IFRS mandates the use of consolidated financial statements, the findings of this study have important practical implications as well. Both regulators and practitioners can learn from this study and use the information in this study in order to improve the transparency of firms in the future.