Master's Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Economics - Finance, grade: 5.5, University of Zurich (Department of Banking and Finance), course: Economics and Finance, language: English, abstract: Does voluntary disclosure quality pay off? And if so, what are the driving forces behind the relationship of voluntary disclosure quality and the cost of equity capital? This study addresses these and other questions in the context of analyzing the determinants of the cost of equity capital for Swiss firms. The relation between voluntary disclosure quality and cost of equity capital is widely known to be affected by self-selection. Potential endogeneity bias is controlled for by adopting a two-stage least squares approach in a cross-sectional setting. Voluntary disclosure quality is proxied by the annual reports disclosure scores for a well-diversified sample of Swiss firms as developed by the Department of Banking and Finance of the University of Zurich. Further, an ex-ante cost of capital metric derived from the dividend discount model is used in this study. Empirical evidence shows that the association between voluntary disclosure quality and cost of equity differs with a firm's stock listing history. While the relation is predicted to be negative for firms at the IPO stage, it is likely reversed at some point in a firm's stock listing history. These results suggest that analysts' information processing activities negatively moderate the impact of voluntary disclosure quality on firm value. Importantly, the predicted interaction between voluntary disclosure quality and stock listing history remains significant when adjusting for endogeneity.

Research on the effects of voluntary disclosure quality on the cost of equity capital is often plagued by endogeneity concerns. I use a dynamic panel system GMM estimator to minimize these concerns by incorporating the dynamic nature of voluntary disclosure choices. The dynamic panel system GMM approach provides internal instruments from the firm's history that directly address endogeneity arising from unobserved heterogeneity and simultaneity. By using hand-collected voluntary disclosure scores, I examine the dynamic relation between voluntary disclosure quality and the cost of equity capital in a panel over 10 years. My results suggest that the empirical relation between voluntary disclosure quality and the cost of equity capital becomes insignificant after controlling adequately for potential dynamic endogeneity, simultaneity, and unobserved heterogeneity. This result is robust to an extension to the U.S. market.

This review lays out a research perspective on earnings quality. We provide an overview of alternative definitions and measures of earnings quality and a discussion of research design choices encountered in earnings quality research. Throughout, we focus on a capital markets setting, as opposed, for example, to a contracting or stewardship setting. Our reason for this choice stems from the view that the capital market uses of accounting information are fundamental, in the sense of providing a basis for other uses, such as stewardship. Because resource allocations are ex ante decisions while contracting/stewardship assessments are ex post evaluations of outcomes, evidence on whether, how and to what degree earnings quality influences capital market resource allocation decisions is fundamental to understanding why and how accounting matters to investors and others, including those charged with stewardship responsibilities. Demonstrating a link between earnings quality and, for example, the costs of equity and debt capital implies a basic economic role in capital allocation decisions for accounting information; this role has only recently been documented in the accounting literature. We focus on how the precision of financial information in capturing one or more underlying valuation-relevant constructs affects the assessment and use of that information by capital market participants. We emphasize that the choice of constructs to be measured is typically contextual. Our main focus is on the precision of earnings, which we view as a summary indicator of the overall quality of financial reporting. Our intent in discussing research that evaluates the capital market effects of earnings quality is both to stimulate further research in this area and to encourage research on related topics, including, for example, the role of earnings quality in contracting and stewardship.

This study examines the relationship between the quality of a firm's voluntary environmental disclosures and firm value by exploring the relationship between the components of firm value (expected future cash flows and cost of equity) and voluntary environmental disclosure quality. We measure voluntary environmental disclosure quality using a disclosure index consistent with the Global Reporting Initiative disclosure framework for a sample of US firms across five industries. In addition to overall disclosure quality, we consider the type (i.e., hard/soft) and the nature (i.e., positive/neutral/negative) of the disclosure in our analysis. We also include controls for both positive and negative environmental performance. Based on this analysis, we document (1) a positive association between some aspects of voluntary environmental disclosure quality and future expected cash flows, and (2) both a negative and positive association between some aspects of voluntary environmental disclosure quality and a firm's cost of equity capital. Our findings are consistent with increased voluntary environmental disclosure quality being associated with firm value through both the expected cash flow and cost of equity capital components. The results also highlight the benefit of parsing broader measures (e.g. voluntary disclosure quality) when examining complex relationships.

The relationship between disclosure quality and cost of equity capital is an important topic in today's economy and generally, economic theory and anecdotal evidence suggest a negative association. Empirical work on this link, however, is confronted with major methodological drawbacks - neither disclosure level nor cost of capital can be observed directly - and has documented somewhat confounding results so far. Adopting a finite horizon version of the residual income model, I provide evidence on the nature of the above relationship and try to quantify the effect of a firm's voluntary disclosure policy on its implied cost of capital. Switzerland seems especially suited for an analysis of this kind given that Swiss firms have considerable reporting discretion and the mandated level of disclosure is low. For a cross-sectional sample of 73 non-financial companies I show a negative and highly significant association between the two variables. The magnitude is such that the most forthcoming firms enjoy about a 1.8% to 2.4% cost advantage over the least forthcoming firms. The findings persist even after controlling for other potentially influential variables, e.g. risk characteristics and firm size. Furthermore, adjusting for self-selection bias - a major concern in disclosure studies - the results are generally consistent with the main hypothesis although at lower levels of statistical significance. One reason for the strong relationship might be found in differing institutional factors between the US and the Swiss capital markets.

A lower cost of equity capital is believed by some to be a benefit of greater voluntary disclosure. I examine this association by regressing cost of capital on beta firm size and a self-constructed disclosure index based on the level of voluntary disclosure provided by 122 manufacturing firms in their 1990 annual reports. The results suggest that for lightly followed firms greater voluntary disclosure reduces cost of equity capital. No such association is found for heavily followed firms. I obtain firm-specific cost of equity capital estimates from an accounting based valuation formula. This approach incorporates forecast data thereby yielding an estimate of expected cost of equity capital and avoiding the noise arising from ex-post deviations from expected value. The association between the cost of equity capital estimates thus obtained and market beta is positive; its correlation with market value is negative. An examination of the internal consistency of the disclosure index and its association with firm characteristics identified in prior research to be correlated with annual report disclosure level provide support for the claim that the index is a valid and reliable measure of disclosure level.