The Impact of Human Resource Expenses on Business Value: Focus on Welfare and Training Expenses in Listed Korean Stock Markets

This article investigates whether investment in education and training and welfare expenses can help promote corporate value. If such expenditures are found to affect enterprise value, this evidence should lead to a revision of the current accounting treatment of education and training and welfare expenses in the Republic of Korea. The empirical results show that the book value of equity, education and training expenses and welfare costs has positive relationships with enterprise value, whereas accounting earnings have significantly negative effects on them in both the full samples and subsamples (i.e., KOSPI, KOSDAQ, large-sized, small and medium-sized firms, high-tech, and low-tech groups). The results of this study provide empirical evidence on the effects of welfare and training costs on firm value. They suggest a need to discuss investments in human capital such as welfare and education and training expenses, which have been treated as expenses for the past decades. However, the results are based only on companies listed on the Korean capital market. It is necessary to analyse firms in other countries, such as Japan, the USA and China.