Ambiguity and risk factors in bank stocks

The determinants of banks' cost of equity are not well understood. We depart from prior work assuming rational expectations and instead explore the impact of Knightian uncertainty or ambiguity on bank stocks. We test a large set of asset pricing models and find that investors' lack of confidence in both the drift and correlation structure driving bank stock returns affects banks' cost of capital. We also investigate the economic relation among ambiguity, market liquidity, and banks' capital shortfall, which reveals the transmission channels through which ambiguity may increase the probability of a systemic crisis. Our findings have implications for macroprudential policy.     

Sunshine-induced mood and SEO pricing: Evidence from detailed investor bids in SEO auctions

We examine sunshine-induced mood and its impacts on investors' bidding decisions in the primary market where seasoned equities are offered. Analyzing a unique database that records seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) investors' locations, identities, and bidding information, we examine the degree to which sunshine exerts an influence on investors' bidding behaviors (and subsequently SEO discounts) from two dimensions: sunshine intensity and duration. We find that investors exposed to stronger sunshine intensity or longer sunshine duration submit a higher bid price for SEOs, thus leading to lower offer discounts. We also find that mood misattribution and risk-taking act as channels to rationalize such a sunshine effect. Our moderating analyses indicate that the documented impact strengthens in the case of greater uncertainty, less-frequent bidders, retail investors, and lower levels of investment. These sunshine effects impact failed bids, SEO participation and SEOs' long-term performance. Our study provides original evidence that investors in the primary market can be influenced by a sunshine-induced mood, which, in turn, determines the cost of equity financing.     

Analyst Report Readability and Stock Returns

This study investigates the market's response to analyst report readability. We posit that readable reports decrease uncertainty of earnings expectations and by extension increase stock prices. Our results show that the equity market reacts more positively to readable reports and that this positive reaction is attributable to a reduction in uncertainty of future performance. Moreover, we find that the effect of readability on stock prices is significantly positive only for firms with greater R&D spending, higher bid‐ask spreads, a greater proportion of uninformed investors, and more experienced analysts, which suggests that readability matters only when information asymmetry in the equity market is high.     

Annual report readability and stock liquidity

We examine the effect of annual report textual complexity on firms’ stock liquidity. Using techniques from computational linguistics, we predict and find that less readable filings are associated with lower stock liquidity. Our study provides evidence that difficult‐to‐read annual reports hinder investors’ ability to process and analyze information contained in corporate annual reports, reducing thereby their willingness to trade which decreases stock liquidity. Our findings are robust to a battery of sensitivity tests, including endogeneity, use of alternative estimation techniques, and use of alternative liquidity and readability proxies.     

董事会报告可读性、制度环境与股权资本成本

依据2007-2016年中国上市公司数据,考量上市公司董事会报告的可读性、制度环境与股权资本成本之间的关系。结果发现：董事会报告更好的可读性、制度环境更完善有助于降低公司股权资本成本;制度环境越完善,公司股权资本成本越少受到董事会报告可读性的影响。鉴此,应完善公司非财务信息披露和外部制度环境,促进企业有效信息的对外传递,降低企业融资成本。     

Policy and oversight of corporate political activities and the cost of equity capital

This paper investigates the effect of voluntary adoption and disclosure of policies/oversight of corporate political activities/spending on the cost of equity capital for S&P 500 firms over the period 2015–2018. Using the CPA-Zicklin Index to measure the level of policies, oversight, and disclosure of corporate political activities, we find that firms with a greater level of policies and oversight enjoy a lower cost of equity capital. We also document that a higher index is associated with higher stock liquidity. The negative relation is more pronounced among firms with higher exposure to political risk and firms with higher dependence on government spending. We also find that a firm’s information environment plays an important role in moderating the relation between policies and oversight of corporate political activities and the cost of equity capital. Our findings suggest that voluntary adoption and disclosure of policies and oversight mitigates risks and uncertainties related to firms’ political activities, thereby reducing information asymmetry and the cost of equity capital.     

A Re-examination of Disclosure Level and the Expected Cost of Equity Capital

This paper examines the association between the cost of equity capital and levels of annual report and timely disclosure, and investor relations activities. We estimate the cost of equity capital using the classic dividend discount model. We find that the cost of equity capital decreases in the annual report disclosure level but increases in the level of timely disclosures. The latter result is contrary to theory but is consistent with managers' claims that greater timely disclosures may increase the cost of equity capital, possibly through increased stock price volatility. We find no association between the cost of equity capital and the level of investor relations activities. We conclude that aggregating across different disclosure types results in a loss of information. Failing to include all disclosure types in regression analyses may lead to a correlated omitted variable bias and erroneous conclusions.     

Does hedge disclosure influence cost of capital for European banks?

Upon extracting and quantifying relevant hedge information from the narrative section of European banks annual reports, this paper examines the impact of such information on cost of capital [as measured by weighted average cost of capital (WACC), cost of equity (COE) and cost of debt (COD)]. Using a sample of 1885 bank-year observations from 19 countries, we find that textual hedge disclosure leads to a significant reduction in WACC, COE, and COD; thus explains a substantial portion of variation in cost of capital. Further, we find that these results are stronger in countries with high corruption and financial openness. Our results are robust to several controls and model specification. Collectively, our findings enrich prior evidence which examines the economic consequences of hedge disclosure.     

Corporate social responsibility orientation and textual features of financial disclosures

This paper examines the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) orientation and textual attributes of financial disclosures. Using a large U.S. sample from 1999 to 2017, we find that firms with high CSR orientation provide more readable disclosures and use a less ambiguous tone in their annual reports. These findings are consistent with the notion that managers in CSR-conscious firms adhere to high ethical standards and commit to improving the transparency of their firms' financial disclosures. Our results are robust to alternative measures of readability and CSR performance, potential endogeneity, and sampling methods. Moreover, in a cross-sectional analysis, we show that the impact of CSR on corporate readability/tone ambiguity is more pronounced for firms with weak corporate governance. Overall, the results suggest that CSR serves as a substitute for traditional corporate governance mechanisms to ensure transparent disclosure.     

The Effect of Accounting Restatements on Earnings Revisions and the Estimated Cost of Capital

This paper examines the effect of accounting restatements on a firm's cost of equity capital. We show that, on average, accounting restatements lead to both decreases in expected future earnings and increases in the firm's cost of equity capital. Depending on the model used, relative percentage increases in the cost of equity capital average between 7 and 19% in the month immediately following a restatement. The relative increase in the cost of capital dissipates as time passes and after controlling for analyst forecast biases, but continues to average between 6 and 15% in the most conservative setting. We also show that restatements initiated by auditors are associated with the largest increase in the cost of capital, and that firms with greater leverage experience greater increases in their cost of capital. Overall, our evidence is consistent with accounting restatements lowering the perceived earnings quality of the firm and increasing investors' required rates of return.     

The influence of business strategy on annual report readability

Concerns about the complexity of firm disclosures have prompted regulators to initiate projects to improve the readability of annual reports. We investigate business strategy as a determinant of annual report readability. As business strategy fundamentally determines a firm’s product and market domain, technology, and organizational structure, it influences a firm’s operating complexity, environmental uncertainty and information asymmetry. Consequently, business strategy frames the level, wording, and complexity of disclosures. We capture a firm’s business strategy based on the Miles and Snow (1978) strategic typology and measure 10-K readability with Li’s (2008) Fog index. We find that firms pursuing an innovation-oriented prospector strategy have less readable 10-Ks relative to firms pursuing an efficiency-oriented defender strategy. We also find that prospectors display more negative and uncertainty tones while defenders exhibit more litigious tone in their 10-Ks. Our study provides useful insights to policy makers as it suggests that efforts to improve annual report readability may be limited for some firms given that business strategy is a fundamental determinant of readability and pronouncements accommodating different strategic orientations are not feasible.     

Management earnings forecast disclosure policy and the cost of equity capital

We examine the relation between management earnings forecast disclosure policy and the cost of equity capital in a cross-section of 1,355 firms over a 4-year post-Regulation Fair Disclosure period (2001 through 2004). We find evidence of a negative association between the quality of management earnings forecasting policy and cost of equity capital, and we document that the strength of the association is greater for firms with higher disclosure costs and for firms with more relevant quarterly management earnings forecasts. Our results are robust to the use of multiple methods to address both endogeneity and the measurement error in firm-specific estimates of implied cost of equity capital.     

Contrasting the information demands of equity- and debt-holders: Evidence from pension liabilities

In the setting of defined-benefit pension liabilities, we hypothesize that equity and debt investors value these liabilities differently. As expected, we find that investors' valuations of equity more closely align with a going concern perspective that emphasizes the long-term funding needs of pension plans. In contrast, as expected, we find that investors' pricing of short-term and unsecured debt more closely aligns with a settlement perspective that emphasizes pension termination costs. For both equity and debt securities, the settlement (going concern) perspective dominates for short-duration (long-duration) pensions. Overall, our evidence suggests that equity and debt investors perceive complex liabilities in predictably different ways that are consistent with their differing information demands, which in turn vary with the characteristics of the obligation.     

Cost of Capital for Exempt Foreign Private Issuers: Information Risk Effect or Earnings Quality Effect? It Depends

We examine whether the information risk accompanying Foreign Private Issuers' (FPIs) exemptions from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reporting requirements is associated with capital market penalties (measured by a higher cost of equity capital) and, further, the extent to which this information risk is mitigated by earnings quality. Our overall results indicate that exempt FPIs exhibit a higher cost of equity capital than reporting FPIs, and this relation still persists after controlling for earnings quality. Furthermore, we partition our sample into firms from strong and weak investor protection environments. Interestingly, similar to the results in Francis et al. (2008), for FPIs from strong investor protection regimes we find no difference in the cost of capital between exempt and filing FPIs, even after controlling for earnings quality. To the contrary, for FPIs from weak investor protection regimes, we find that the exemption is associated with a higher cost of equity capital, and that earnings quality does not significantly reduce the premium paid by these issuers.     

Climate risk: The price of drought

We document a significant positive relation between drought risk and the cost of equity capital. Our estimation shows that the cost of equity capital is 92 basis points higher for firms affected by severe drought conditions. We provide evidence that when firms are affected by droughts, firms with higher local institutional holdings exhibit a higher cost of equity capital. This result supports the well-known local bias of institutional investors, and suggests that diversification cannot fully eliminate the loss in wealth caused by droughts. Consistent with theoretical predictions, we find that drought duration and drought intensity further increase a firm's risk premium. However, for firms with diversified cash flows/investments, geographically dispersed business operations, and high cash holdings, the impact of drought on the expected return is significantly lessened. Overall, our findings show that investors require a higher rate of returns on firms affected by droughts and offer implications on how firms can mitigate the impact of droughts on their cost of capital.     

The annual report tone and return Comovement—Evidence from China's stock market

Our paper uses A-share firms listed on Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) and Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE) to explore the role of the textual tone of Chinese listed companies' annual reports on Chinese equities' return comovement. Our paper finds that the tone embedded in A-share companies' annual reports significantly increases Chinese stocks' return comovement as the tone exacerbates information asymmetry and reduces the quality of information. In addition, the annual report tone has a prominent effect on Chinese stocks' return comovement for stocks with low institutional ownership, private ownership stocks, and stocks with low market shares. Further investigation shows that the impact of the tone of the annual report on Chinese stocks' return comovement is strong during economic expansions, and when investor sentiment is high. An additional examination on hidden information in the textual tone suggests that published financial data do not explain a substantial part of the textual tone that is associated with the increase in the comovement, suggesting that private information should enhance informational opaqueness in the stock market.     

Credit default swap spreads and annual report readability

This paper investigates whether annual report readability matters to CDS market participants and how it affects their evaluation on a firm’s credit risk, as measured by CDS spreads. We find that the less readable the annual reports, the higher the CDS spreads. Furthermore, the impact of readability on CDS spreads is more concentrated on firms with high information asymmetry and with investment grade ratings. Our results suggest that investors take into account the readability in their view of the firms’ credit risk. Creditors appear to suffer higher cost on CDS protection of the debts if the underlying firms have less readable annual reports.     

Dividend Taxes and Implied Cost of Equity Capital

We estimate firm‐level implied cost of equity capital based on recent advances in accounting and finance research and examine the effect of dividend taxes on the cost of equity capital. We investigate whether dividend taxes affect firms' cost of capital by testing the relation between the implied cost of equity capital and a measure of the tax‐penalized portion of dividend yield, which we define as the product of dividend yield and the dividend tax penalty. The results generally support the dividend tax capitalization hypothesis. We find a positive relation between the implied cost of equity capital and the tax‐penalized portion of dividend yield that is decreasing in aggregate institutional ownership, our proxy for tax‐advantaged investors. The evidence in this study adds to the understanding of the effect of investor‐level taxes on equity value.     

Does capital market drive corporate investment efficiency? Evidence from equity lending supply

The increased equity lending supply (ELS) in the equity loan market, available for short sellers to borrow, exposes a firm to greater short selling threats. Considering short sellers' strong incentives to uncover firm-specific information and monitor managers, we hypothesize that short selling threats, proxied by ELS, enhance corporate investment efficiency. We find that ELS significantly reduces managerial tendencies to underinvest (overinvest) especially for firms prone to underinvest (overinvest). The effect of ELS on investment efficiency is stronger for firms with higher information asymmetry and weaker corporate governance, confirming short sellers' role in mitigating information and agency costs. However, short selling risk weakens the effect of ELS. Our evidence is robust to endogeneity checks and suggests that corporate investment can be driven by a particular capital market condition: the amount of lendable shares in the equity loan market.     

The impact of narrative disclosure readability on bond ratings and the cost of debt

Prior research on the determinants of credit ratings has focused on rating agencies’ use of quantitative accounting information, but the there is scant evidence on the impact of textual attributes. This study examines the impact of financial disclosure narrative on bond market outcomes. We find that less readable financial disclosures are associated with less favorable ratings, greater bond rating agency disagreement, and a higher cost of debt. We improve causal identification by exploiting the 1998 Plain English Mandate, which required a subset of firms to exogenously improve the readability of their filings. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that the firms required to improve the readability of their filings experience more favorable ratings, lower bond rating disagreement, and lower cost of debt. Collectively, our evidence suggests that textual financial disclosure attributes appear to not only influence bond market intermediaries’ opinions but also firms’ cost of debt.