• 아태비즈니스연구
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• 제10권4호
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• pp.31-47
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• 2019

The recently revised Act on External Audit has taken effect as of November 2018, where standard audit hour rule is included to enhance the audit quality requiring appropriate audit hour input. It has two issues, one is how much the standard audit hours should be and the other is how to control the auditor proficiency between positions when deciding standard audit hours. This paper focuses on the latter issue and studies if auditor proficiency measured with the KICPA position proficiency weight is economically meaningful and has audit quality implication. The KICPA proficiency weights of partner and junior CPA are 1.2, and 0.4 with senior CPA being 1. The results are as follows. First, we find that the audit proficiency decreases discretionary accruals, the proxy of audit quality. Second, the degree to which the audit proficiency decreases discretionary accruals is pronounced with non-big4 firm. The results imply that the KICPA position proficiency weight reflects auditor experiences which help to improve audit quality.