Does Risk Disclosure Affect Firm's Cost of Capital?

Risk disclosure refers to providing information to the user to inform of any opportunities or threats .Theoretically, disclosure mainly aims to reduce the information asymmetry as well as investor uncertainty, thereby indirectly lowering the equity cost. An advantage of risk disclosure is its effectiveness in reducing the equity cost. Therefore, risk disclosure can help decrease investor uncertainty, thus diminishing the equity cost. This project mainly investigates the relationship between risk reporting and cost of capital in 174 firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange for the period 2012-2018. This is an applied research study in terms of purpose and descriptive-correlational in terms of methodology. In this study, the variable of risk disclosure was collected by analyzing the content of financial statements, explanatory notes, and board of director reports. The cost of capital was calculated in three ways: cost of debt, cost of ordinary shares, and weighted average cost of capital (WACC). Thus, the relationship between risk disclosure and cost of capital was examined in the form of three individual hypotheses. The results demonstrated no significant relationship between risk disclosure and cost of debt; therefore, the first hypothesis is rejected. It was also suggested that there is a statistically significant negative relationship between risk disclosure and cost of common equity; thus, the second hypothesis was confirmed. Finally, risk disclosure appeared to have a statistically significant negative relationship with WACC; therefore, the third hypothesis was confirmed.