Bachelor Thesis from the year 2015 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 1.0, accadis Hochschule Bad Homburg, course: Final Thesis, language: English, abstract: The potential relation of increased levels of corporate disclosure on a firm’s cost of capital remains of great importance, both from a research-focussed and business- oriented point-of-view; however, the existence of methodological drawbacks has led to ever more complex studies, which eventually made the literature vast and confusing for outside readers. The purpose of this thesis was to organise and thereby simplify the different perspectives on a dynamic issue. It is argued that, in theory, enhanced transparency levels the marketplace by spreading information more equally among investors. Consequently, the information asymmetry component is mitigated, which translates into lower levels of estimation risk, transaction costs and default risk. After all, theoretical studies provided evidence that increased disclosure lowers the costs of capital. However, since neither of the involved components is directly observable, a myriad of approaches emerged to approximate actual figures. Although most of these proxies follow similar patterns, it is argued that none of the present approaches is free from constraints, which, in turn, affects the reliability of existing empirical studies. Research, after all, still lacks a generally accepted and holistic approach to the present day. In this context, one of the most recent findings provides a new and rather praxis-oriented perspective, by arguing that firms and investors are merely interested in a good-practice level of disclosure. Regardless of the perspective, an ultimate conclusion has yet to be revealed by the literature and it seems illusory that academics and practitioners agree on one approach in the future. Nevertheless, the contribution of this thesis was merely to structure and simplify the current state of a dynamic issue. The author therefore used easy to understand graphics and tables and linked the findings to related fields of research, where necessary.

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2015 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 1.0, accadis International College Bad Homburg, course: Final Thesis, language: English, abstract: The potential relation of increased levels of corporate disclosure on a firm's cost of capital remains of great importance, both from a research-focussed and business- oriented point-of-view; however, the existence of methodological drawbacks has led to ever more complex studies, which eventually made the literature vast and confusing for outside readers. The purpose of this thesis was to organise and thereby simplify the different perspectives on a dynamic issue. It is argued that, in theory, enhanced transparency levels the marketplace by spreading information more equally among investors. Consequently, the information asymmetry component is mitigated, which translates into lower levels of estimation risk, transaction costs and default risk. After all, theoretical studies provided evidence that increased disclosure lowers the costs of capital. However, since neither of the involved components is directly observable, a myriad of approaches emerged to approximate actual figures. Although most of these proxies follow similar patterns, it is argued that none of the present approaches is free from constraints, which, in turn, affects the reliability of existing empirical studies. Research, after all, still lacks a generally accepted and holistic approach to the present day. In this context, one of the most recent findings provides a new and rather praxis-oriented perspective, by arguing that firms and investors are merely interested in a good-practice level of disclosure. Regardless of the perspective, an ultimate conclusion has yet to be revealed by the literature and it seems illusory that academics and practitioners agree on one approach in the future. Nevertheless, the contribution of this thesis was merely to structure and simplify the current state of a dynamic i

In this paper, we investigate whether intellectual capital (IC) and financial disclosures jointly affect the firm's cost of equity capital. In contrast to prior research, we disaggregate disclosures into IC and financial disclosures and examine whether the two disclosure types are jointly related to the cost of equity capital. We also investigate whether IC and financial disclosures have an interaction effect on the cost of equity capital. Using data for a sample of 125 UK firms, we find a negative relationship between the cost of equity capital and IC disclosure. We find that the relationship between financial disclosure and the cost of equity capital is magnified when combined with IC disclosure. Additionally, we find that IC and financial disclosures interact in shaping their effects on the cost of equity capital. Further analyses suggest that the effect of financial disclosure on the cost of equity capital is augmented for firms characterised by a medium level of IC disclosure. These results provide important insights into the relationship between disclosures and cost of equity capital and have policy and practical implications.

Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject Business economics - Accounting and Taxes, grade: 1.0, Mannheim University of Applied Sciences, language: English, abstract: A series of financial crises and corporate scandals gave rise to increasing concerns about prevailing models of corporate governance and disclosure and stimulated financial disclosure and reporting regulation. As a result, there has been considerably more interest in documenting the benefits of increased disclosure than its costs. Accordingly, numerous papers purport to provide evidence of capital market benefits through incremental disclosure. At the same time, firms refrain from voluntarily committing to increased disclosure, implying that there must be a trade-off between associated benefits and costs. Consequently, critics contend that the capital market benefits are inconclusive. Instead, increased disclosure may result in adverse capital market effects through increasing information asymmetry. Moreover, critics predict that increased disclosure imposes further costs on the firm. The purpose of this seminar thesis is to review existing literature on these expected costs of increased disclosure. Thereby, I focus on controversies regarding the heavily debated capital market effects as well as on specific forces that determine proprietary and litigation costs associated with increased disclosure. While a firm’s disclosure choices likely are a joint outcome of market forces and incentives provided by regulation, the seminar thesis is limited to voluntary disclosure choices as a starting point for possible disclosure regulation. The remainder of the seminar thesis is structured as follows. Section 2 reviews the literature on the capital market effects of voluntary disclosure through its impact on information asymmetry. Section 3 discusses the ambiguous impact of voluntary disclosure on litigation and proprietary costs. Section 4 concludes the seminar thesis.

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.