 International Differences in the Cost of Equity Capital: Do Legal Institutions and Securities Regulation Matter?Luzi Hail and Christian Leuz Journal of Accounting Research, 2006, vol. 44, issue 3, 485-531 Abstract: This paper examines international differences in firms' cost of equity capital across 40 countries. We analyze whether the effectiveness of a country's legal institutions and securities regulation is systematically related to cross‐country differences in the cost of equity capital. We employ several models to estimate firms' implied or ex ante cost of capital. Our results support the conclusion that firms from countries with more extensive disclosure requirements, stronger securities regulation, and stricter enforcement mechanisms have a significantly lower cost of capital. We perform extensive sensitivity analyses to assess the potentially confounding influence of countries' long‐run growth differences on our results. We also show that, consistent with theory, the cost of capital effects of strong legal institutions become substantially smaller and, in many cases, statistically insignificant as capital markets become globally more integrated. Date: 2006 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:joares:v:44:y:2006:i:3:p:485-531 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Journal of Accounting Research is currently edited by Philip G. Berger, Luzi Hail, Christian Leuz, Haresh Sapra, Douglas J. Skinner, Rodrigo Verdi and Regina Wittenberg Moerman More articles in Journal of Accounting Research from Wiley Blackwell |
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