본 연구는 외국인투자자가 우월한 정보분석 및 해석능력으로 내국인투자자보다 우수한 투자성과를 이루었는지 분석하고, 외국인투자자의 투자성과에 영향을 미칠 것으로 예상되는 보수주의 및 국제회계기준 도입과의 관련성을 분석한다. 외국인투자자의 투자성과 측정을 위해서 투자자의 성과측정치로서 적합한 Dichev(2007)의 내부수익률(IRR)을 적용한다. 2002년부터 2012년까지 외국인이 투자한 기업을 대상으로 총 3,394기업-년도의 표본에 대하여 분석을 수행하였으며, 주요 실증분석 결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 분석기간 동안 외국인투자자는 내국인투자자보다 우수한 투자성과를 보인 것으로 나타났다. 이는 외국인투자자의 정보분석능력과 해석능력이 내국인투자자보다 우월함을 의미한다. 둘째, 보수적인 회계처리를 수행한 기업일수록 외국인투자자의 투자성과와 내국인투자자의 투자성과 차이는 심화되는 것으로 나타났다. 이러한 결과는 외국인투자자가 보수적인 회계처리를 수행하는 기업들에서 내국인 투자자들보다 우수한 수익률을 얻었음을 의미하는 것으로서, 외국인투자자가 투자의사결정과정에서 내국인투자자들에 비해 기업의 보수주의 정보를 보다 효과적으로 이용하고 있음을 시사한다. 셋째, 국제회계기준의 도입 이후에 외국인투자자의 투자성과와 내국인투자자의 투자성과 차이는 심화되는 것으로 나타났다. 이는 국제회계기준의 도입으로 인하여 국가간 회계정보의 비교가능성이 증대되어 외국인투자자가 보다 수월하게 해당 기업의 회계정보를 분석하고 해석할 수 있게 되었음을 의미한다. 본 연구는 투자자의 현금흐름을 추정하여 내부수익률(IRR)을 이용한 투자성과를 적용하고, 외국인투자자의 투자성과와 보수주의 및 국제회계기준 도입과의 관련성을 분석하였다는 점에서 선행연구와 차별화된다.
The size of foreign investment has been increasing and in the financial study field, whether foreign investors can have a better performance than domestic investors has been main issue. In general, foreign investors’ performance can be superior to domestic’s. But this thought could not remain for such a long time, because of sample period, market category, and research methodology. So we cannot for sure that performance of foreign investors are better than domestic investors. Many prior literatures said that foreign investors have specialized international experiences in investment, a good ability for analysis and interpretation for firm and market informations. They can use this ability for invest decision making, so that they can have a better profit rate than here in Korea. But other studies said that foreign investors have a difficulty in getting informations of firm and market. So their investment profit is not as good as we thought. In Korea security market, foreigners’ investment was active after 1998 financial crisis, many prior study has been processed using before IMF crisis data. Considering the prior research (foreign investor’s performances are better than other’s after IMF crisis), there is possibility of different results if we use current market data. In addition, many prior studies used buy-and-hold return for calculating profit rate. This measure is proper for individual firm’s performance, but not for invertor (Dichev and Yu 2011). So we measure foreigners’ performance using internal rate of return (IRR). Basically by using share price and number of share, we estimate foreign investors’ and domestic investors’ cash flow. After that, we estimate each investors’ IRR. We expect that foreign investors are more prefer conservative accounting than others. So they have more interesting in conservative firm. In short-term perspective, conservative accounting is negative to firm’s profit, but has positive effect to firm’s value in the long-term perspective. If foreign investors consider short-term and long-term effect, then using this conservative information data in investing process, they get more. We also expect adoption of IFRS has effect on this process. IFRS accounting information has many advantages in comparison information in different countries and foreigners are more accustomed to IFRS. That has more positive effect on foreigners’ profit. This paper examines whether foreign investors earn higher return than domestic investors’ due to the differences of information analysis ability. In addition to this topic, we also analyze the impacts of conservatism and adoption of IFRS to the foreign investors performance. We use Dichev(2007)'s IRR(Internal rate of return) to measure investor's performance, and measure conservatism using Khan and Watts(2009) and Paek and Lee(2004)’s methodology. Our sample consists of 3,394 firm-years from 2002 to 2012. The findings of this study are as follows. First, foreign investors’ IRR is higher than that of domestic investor on our test periods. It implies that foreign investors may have ability to sophisticated investment skills. Second, the degree of conservatism makes differences of investment return between foreigners and domestic investors. In other words, the foreign investor had higher returns on the more conservative firms. This result shows that foreign investors use the information of firms's conservatism more effectively on the investment decision making process than do domestic investors. Third, adoption of IFRS makes bigger differences of investment return between foreigners and domestic investors. We interpret that IFRS plays an important role in decreasing information asymmetry between foreign and domestic investors. We contribute to previous accounting literatures by using new measure of investment performance between foreign and domestic investors, conservatism and adoption of IFRS.