The Effects of Widening Daily Stock Price Limits on the Relevance between Audit Quality and Stock Return

The study investigates the effect of the widened daily stock price limits on the usefulness of accounting information in Korea: 1) whether investors place a higher importance on audit quality, an indicator of the reliability of accounting information, and 2) whether there are differences in the relationships between audit quality and stock-price earning-rates two years before and after June 15, 2016. This study employs samples of two years (2013 to 2015) before the widening and two years after the widening (2016 to 2017). The samples are limited to the companies listed on the Korea Stock Exchange, accounting settled in December, collected from Fn-Guide and TS-2000 of the Korea Listed Companies Association. The results show that the positive association between audit quality and stock return was increased during the later period, compared to the preceding period. This tendency was more evident in companies with higher debt ratios and companies with lower levels of income smoothing, which is considered to have higher risks. The findings suggest that it is the first study evaluating the effect of widening daily stock price limits, made on June 15, 2015, on the usefulness of audit quality information by examining the relevance between audit quality and stock return.