본 연구는 기업의 특성이 회계실무에서 관행적으로 사용하고 있는 보수주의에 미치는 영향을 조사한다. 구체적으로 본 연구는 (1) 일반부채비율과 금융기관차입금의 비율, (2) 기관투자자지분율 및 외국인투자지분율, (3) 상장여부가 보수주의와 갖는 관계를 조사한다. 일반부채비율은 보수주의와 유의한 양의 관계를 갖지만 부채 중 금융기관차입금은 보수주의와 유의한 음의 관계를 갖는다. 외국인투자지분율은 보수주의를 증대하나 기관투자자지분율은 보수성과 유의한 관계를 갖지 않는다. 또한 상장기업이 비상장기업에 비해 높은 보수성을 보였다.

We investigate the relationship between corporate characteristics and conservatism. In particular, we examine the role of (1) public debt and debt from financial institutions, (2) institutional ownership and foreign ownership, (3) listing status to conservatism. Although the role of conservatism is still at debate, conservatism is believed to be useful because it protects investors from corporate insiders. We argue that the level of conservatism might be systematically related to corporate characteristics. More specifically, First, we expect that firms with higher public debt ratio will increase the level of conservatism to reduce the cost of debt financing. Second, since financial institutions have direct access to inside information of the firm, they are less likely to rely upon conservatism to protect themselves from insiders. Third, listed firms have more diverse interested parties relative to unlisted firms, which suggests that they are more likely to find conservatism beneficial to reduce the agency costs. Finally, we also examine the role of the block holders in determining the level of conservatism. We show that public debts are positively associated with conservatism, whereas debts from financial institutions are negatively associated with conservatism. In addition, foreigner holdings are positively related to conservatism, suggesting that foreign investors ask for conservatism as a means to protect themselves from insiders. However, institutional holdings are not systematically related to conservatism, consistent with the observation that the role of the institutional shareholders is limited at least until recently in Korea. The results indicate that accounting of listed firms is more conservative than that of unlisted firms. This suggests that listed firms find conservatism more beneficial because of the larger agency problems relative to unlisted firms. The results are robust to several sensitivity checks.