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.

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.

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.

The study analysed the relationship between accounting disclosure, both mandatory and voluntary, on the cost of equity capital for listed companies in the Egyptian exchange. The focus is on analysing this relationship in one of the emerging capital markets where there is a paucity of research analysing this issue. To achieve this aim, two self-constructed disclosure indices for mandatory and voluntary disclosure were used to measure the level of disclosure in Egypt. The cost of equity capital was measured based on three methods identified in the literature, namely the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), the Fama-French three factor model, and the industrial earnings-price ratio. To analyse the effect of accounting disclosure on the cost of equity capital, each of the cost of equity measurement methods was regressed on mandatory and voluntary disclosure scores, alternatively, and some controls that are identified in the literature to affect the association between the two variables. The control variables used were firm size, leverage, book-to-market ratio, profitability, liquidity, and sales growth. As a robustness check, a composite measure of the three cost of equity methods was used and the effect of the control variables was excluded from the analyses. To control for the existent endogeneity in the explanatory variable, accounting disclosure, a dynamic panel system of the generalized method of moments (SGMM) was used in the regression analyses. Using a sample of 657 firm year observations for 73 firms across 11 industries for nine years from 2008 to 2016, the study found a significant negative association between voluntary disclosure level and cost of equity capital, however, the study found a significant positive association between mandatory disclosure level and cost of equity capital. The results of the study could benefit various parties including researchers, regulators, and investors. It provides a motivation to researchers interested in analysing this association in Egypt and other emerging markets besides providing these researchers with a suitable data set to measure disclosure and cost of equity capital in Egypt. Regulators could benefit from the results of the study through identifying the shortcomings that need to be overcome to improve the disclosure environment in Egypt. Investors could use the results of the study as a data source in making investment decisions in Egypt.

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.