IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/amu/wpaper/2012-12.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Information Environment and the Cost of Capital: A New Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Xuguang Sheng
  • Orie Barron
  • Maya Thevenot

Abstract

Sheng and Thevenot (2011) develop a new measure of uncertainty which is a modification of the uncertainty measure advanced by Barron, Kim, Lim and Stevens (BKLS 1998), and they find this new uncertainty measure to be superior to the BKLS measure in certain settings. We follow Sheng and Thevenot's suggestion for modifying other measures of the information environment, and we demonstrate that our new measures are superior in another setting. We also find that cost of equity capital increases greatly with our new measures of information asymmetry and average information precision even after controlling for the level of market competition. Our regression estimates suggest that information asymmetry and average information precision are more important factors than equity beta and firm size in determining firms' cost of capital, and that the seemingly great importance of these new measures is not apparent using the prior BKLS measures of information asymmetry and precision.

Suggested Citation

  • Xuguang Sheng & Orie Barron & Maya Thevenot, 2012. "Information Environment and the Cost of Capital: A New Approach," Working Papers 2012-12, American University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:amu:wpaper:2012-12
    DOI: 10.17606/8y8r-1225
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.17606/8y8r-1225
    File Function: First version, 2012
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17606/8y8r-1225?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christopher S. Armstrong & John E. Core & Daniel J. Taylor & Robert E. Verrecchia, 2011. "When Does Information Asymmetry Affect the Cost of Capital?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(1), pages 1-40, March.
    2. Ng, Jeffrey, 2011. "The effect of information quality on liquidity risk," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 126-143.
    3. Diamond, Douglas W & Verrecchia, Robert E, 1991. "Disclosure, Liquidity, and the Cost of Capital," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(4), pages 1325-1359, September.
    4. Orie E. Barron & Mary Harris Stanford & Yong Yu, 2009. "Further Evidence on the Relation between Analysts' Forecast Dispersion and Stock Returns," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(2), pages 329-357, June.
    5. Sheng, Xuguang & Thevenot, Maya, 2012. "A new measure of earnings forecast uncertainty," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 21-33.
    6. Barth, Mary E. & Konchitchki, Yaniv & Landsman, Wayne R., 2013. "Cost of capital and earnings transparency," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 206-224.
    7. David Easley & Maureen O'hara, 2004. "Information and the Cost of Capital," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 59(4), pages 1553-1583, August.
    8. Christine A. Botosan & Marlene A. Plumlee & HE Wen, 2011. "The Relation between Expected Returns, Realized Returns, and Firm Risk Characteristics," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(4), pages 1085-1122, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Aabo, Tom & Pantzalis, Christos & Park, Jung Chul, 2015. "Multinationality and opaqueness," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 65-84.

    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. Suresh Nallareddy & Maria Ogneva, 2017. "Accrual quality, skill, and the cross-section of mutual fund returns," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 503-542, June.
    2. Xuguang Sheng & Maya Thevenot, 2013. "Differential Interpretation of Public Information: Estimation and Inference," Working Papers 2013-03, American University, Department of Economics.
    3. Schreder, Max, 2018. "Idiosyncratic information and the cost of equity capital: A meta-analytic review of the literature," Journal of Accounting Literature, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 142-172.
    4. Orie Barron & Xuguang Sheng & Maya Thevenot, 2013. "Information Environment and The Cost of Capital," Working Papers 2013-003, The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting.
    5. Ho, Kung-Cheng & Yang, Lu & Luo, Sijia, 2022. "Information disclosure ratings and continuing overreaction: Evidence from the Chinese capital market," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 638-656.
    6. Terry Shevlin, 2013. "Some personal observations on the debate on the link between financial reporting quality and the cost of equity capital," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 38(3), pages 447-473, December.
    7. Sheng, Xuguang (Simon) & Thevenot, Maya, 2015. "Quantifying differential interpretation of public information using financial analysts’ earnings forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 515-530.
    8. Max Schreder & Pawel Bilinski, 2022. "Information Quality and the Expected Rate of Return: A Structural Equation Modelling Approach," Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, Springer;Japanese Association of Financial Economics and Engineering, vol. 29(2), pages 139-170, June.
    9. Lijuan Zhang & Mark Wilson, 2018. "Does the accruals quality premium arise from information risk?," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 58(2), pages 599-632, June.
    10. Shai Levi & Xiao-Jun Zhang, 2015. "Do Temporary Increases in Information Asymmetry Affect the Cost of Equity?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(2), pages 354-371, February.
    11. Olga Plesco & Ludmila Sobol, 2013. "The Issue Of Asymmetric Information Upon The Capital Market," CES Working Papers, Centre for European Studies, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, vol. 5(2), pages 254-266.
    12. Lin, Zih-Ying & Chang, Chuang-Chang & Wang, Yaw-Huei, 2018. "The impacts of asymmetric information and short sales on the illiquidity risk premium in the stock option market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 152-165.
    13. Liu, Jinjing & Wang, Hong, 2022. "Economic policy uncertainty and the cost of capital," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    14. Rjiba, Hatem & Saadi, Samir & Boubaker, Sabri & Ding, Xiaoya (Sara), 2021. "Annual report readability and the cost of equity capital," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    15. Qi Chen & Zeqiong Huang & Yun Zhang, 2014. "The Effects of Public Information with Asymmetrically Informed Short‐Horizon Investors," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(3), pages 635-669, June.
    16. Hung, Shengmin & Qiao, Zheng, 2017. "Shadows in the Sun: Crash risk behind Earnings Transparency," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 1-18.
    17. Karthik Balakrishnan & Mary Brooke Billings & Bryan Kelly & Alexander Ljungqvist, 2014. "Shaping Liquidity: On the Causal Effects of Voluntary Disclosure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(5), pages 2237-2278, October.
    18. Hsin-Yi Yu & Li-Wen Chen, 2017. "Ambiguous Customer Identity Disclosure and the Cost of Equity Capital," Review of Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies (RPBFMP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 20(03), pages 1-29, September.
    19. Chelley-Steeley, Patricia L. & Lambertides, Neophytos, 2016. "Cost of capital changes, the quality of trading information and market architecture," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(4), pages 401-414.
    20. De George, Emmanuel T. & Li, Xi & Shivakumar, Lakshmanan, 2016. "A review of the IFRS adoption literature," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 67599, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    cost of capital; information quality; information asymmetry; ST uncertainty; BKLS;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M41 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Accounting
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    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:amu:wpaper:2012-12. 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: Thomas Meal (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.american.edu/cas/economics/ .

    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.