IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pep/journl/v1y1991i1p29-44.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Size, Liquidity, and the Cost of Equity

Author

Listed:
  • William L. Beedles

    (University of Kansas)

Abstract

The inverse association of capitalization and performance is found to hold over a broader range of firms than has been previously studied. This result is found by merging data for listed United States firms with data for listed Australian companies, which are on average much smaller than their North American brethren. For the entire size spectrum and across listing locations, liquidity is found to be related to performance, adding support to the popular belief that it is (perhaps one of) the factor(s) missing from conventional tests of asset pricing. The results suggest that a lack of liquidity, rather than size per se, is a material contributor to the high cost of equity finance experienced by small companies. Some commentators attach much currency to proposals to subsidize small firms by enhancing the liquidity of their shares; the results reported here suggest that such subsidies may be effective.

Suggested Citation

  • William L. Beedles, 1991. "Size, Liquidity, and the Cost of Equity," Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance, Pepperdine University, Graziadio School of Business and Management, vol. 1(1), pages 29-44, Spring.
    • Handle: RePEc:pep:journl:v:1:y:1991:i:1:p:29-44
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://jefsite.org/RePEc/pep/journl/jef-1991-01-1-d-beedles.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Schwert, G. William, 1983. "Size and stock returns, and other empirical regularities," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 3-12, June.
    2. Banz, Rolf W., 1981. "The relationship between return and market value of common stocks," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 3-18, March.
    3. Reinganum, Marc R., 1981. "Misspecification of capital asset pricing : Empirical anomalies based on earnings' yields and market values," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 19-46, March.
    4. Amihud, Yakov & Mendelson, Haim, 1987. "Trading Mechanisms and Stock Returns: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 42(3), pages 533-553, July.
    5. Sanford J. Grossman & Merton H. Miller, 1988. "Liquidity and Market Structure," NBER Working Papers 2641, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Michael C. Jensen, 1968. "The Performance Of Mutual Funds In The Period 1945–1964," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 23(2), pages 389-416, May.
    7. Grossman, Sanford J & Miller, Merton H, 1988. " Liquidity and Market Structure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 43(3), pages 617-637, July.
    8. William L. Beedles & Peter Dodd & R. R. Officer, 1988. "Regularities in Australian Share Returns," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 13(1), pages 1-29, June.
    9. Yakov Amihub & Haim Mendelson, 1989. "Liquidity And Cost Of Capital: Implications For Corporate Management," Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Morgan Stanley, vol. 2(3), pages 65-73, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vayanos, Dimitri & Wang, Jiang, 2013. "Market Liquidity—Theory and Empirical Evidence ," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1289-1361, Elsevier.
    2. Vayanos, Dimitri & Wang, Jiang, 2012. "Market liquidity - theory and empirical evidence," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 119044, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Trabelsi, Mohamed Ali, 2010. "Choix de portefeuille: comparaison des différentes stratégies [Portfolio selection: comparison of different strategies]," MPRA Paper 82946, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 01 Dec 2010.
    4. Turan G. Bali & Robert F. Engle & Yi Tang, 2017. "Dynamic Conditional Beta Is Alive and Well in the Cross Section of Daily Stock Returns," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(11), pages 3760-3779, November.
    5. Wolfgang Aussenegg & Andreas Grünbichler, 1999. "Der Size-Effekt am Österreichischen Aktienmarkt," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 51(7), pages 636-661, July.
    6. Loderer, Claudio & Roth, Lukas, 2005. "The pricing discount for limited liquidity: evidence from SWX Swiss Exchange and the Nasdaq," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 239-268, March.
    7. Kehr, Carl-Heinrich & Krahnen, Jan P. & Theissen, Erik, 2001. "The Anatomy of a Call Market," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 10(3-4), pages 249-270, July.
    8. Shmuel Hauser & Azriel Levy & Uzi Yaari, 2001. "Trading frequency and the efficiency of price discovery in a non-dealer market," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(3), pages 187-197.
    9. Blocher, Jesse & Reed, Adam V. & Van Wesep, Edward D., 2013. "Connecting two markets: An equilibrium framework for shorts, longs, and stock loans," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(2), pages 302-322.
    10. Chordia, Tarun & Roll, Richard & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 2011. "Recent trends in trading activity and market quality," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(2), pages 243-263, August.
    11. Jun, So Young & Kim, Dong Sung & Jung, Suk Yoon & Jun, Sang Gyung & Kim, Jong Woo, 2022. "Stock investment strategy combining earnings power index and machine learning," International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, Elsevier, vol. 47(C).
    12. Rocciolo, Francesco & Gheno, Andrea & Brooks, Chris, 2022. "Explaining abnormal returns in stock markets: An alpha-neutral version of the CAPM," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    13. Elijah Brewer & William Jackson, 2000. "Requiem for a Market Maker: The Case of Drexel Burnham Lambert and Junk Bonds," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 17(3), pages 209-235, September.
    14. Eduardo Sandoval, 2015. "Small Vs Large Caps. Evidence From Developed And Emerging Stock Markets During Periods With And Without Financial Crisis, Small Vs Large Caps. Evidencia De Mercados Accionarios Desarrollados Y Emergen," Revista Internacional Administracion & Finanzas, The Institute for Business and Finance Research, vol. 8(4), pages 27-44.
    15. Dong, Xi & Feng, Shu & Ling, Leng & Song, Pingping, 2017. "Dynamic autocorrelation of intraday stock returns," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 274-280.
    16. Fernando Rubio, 2005. "Eficiencia De Mercado, Administracion De Carteras De Fondos Y Behavioural Finance," Finance 0503028, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 23 Jul 2005.
    17. Albert Eddy & Bruce Seifert, 1988. "Firm Size And Dividend Announcements," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 11(4), pages 295-302, December.
    18. Don Anderson & Anthony Lynch & Nicholas Mathiou, 1990. "Behaviour of CAPM Anomalies in Smaller Firms: Australian Evidence," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 15(1), pages 1-38, June.
    19. Argiro Svingou, 2013. "Cross-sectional Analysis of Stock Returns in Athens Stock Exchange for the Period 2004-2011," SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business, SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business, University of Piraeus, vol. 63(1-2), pages 100-120, June.
    20. Gregory Connor & Lisa R. Goldberg & Robert A. Korajczyk, 2010. "Portfolio Risk Analysis," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9224.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Size; Liquidity; Cost of Equity; Cost of Capital;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L25 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Performance
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pep:journl:v:1:y:1991:i:1:p:29-44. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Craig Everett (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bapepus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.