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Cost of Capital and Earnings Transparency

Author

Listed:
  • Barth, Mary E.

    (Stanford University)

  • Konchitchki, Yaniv

    (University of Southern California, Los Angeles)

  • Landsman, Wayne R.

    (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

Abstract

We provide evidence that firms with more transparent earnings enjoy a lower cost of capital. We develop an earnings transparency measure that captures cross-sectional and intertemporal variation in the extent to which earnings and change in earnings covary contemporaneously with stock returns. We find that firms with more transparent earnings have a lower cost of capital as reflected in cross-sectional variation in subsequent excess returns and mean differences in returns, after controlling for the Fama-French and momentum factors. We also find that more transparent earnings are significantly negatively associated with expected equity cost of capital. Prior research reports a significant relation between a value relevance measure, which bears some resemblance to our earnings transparency measure, and cost of capital. We show that these relations are not significant after correcting for cross-sectional correlation in residuals, which is consistent with the measure used in prior research lacking intertemporal variation.

Suggested Citation

  • Barth, Mary E. & Konchitchki, Yaniv & Landsman, Wayne R., 2008. "Cost of Capital and Earnings Transparency," Research Papers 2015, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:stabus:2015
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • M4 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting
    • M41 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Accounting

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