B/M (PrMOM) is positively (negatively) related to the cost of equity capital.
As including these measures increases the overall explanatory power of the regression to 18.7%, it is capturing some aspect of the expected cost of equity capital not explained by the other variables included in the model but it does not appear that either captures information risk.
VI. Summary and Conclusions We examine the effect of total disclosure on the cost of equity capital and find contrary to our expectations, that greater total disclosure is not associate with a lower cost of equity capital. However, we find that limiting the analysis to an examination between overall disclosure level and the cost of equity capital is insufficient, as the relation between disclosure level and cost of equity capital varies by type of disclosure. Moreover, we find that examining the association between one type of disclosure without controlling for other types of disclosure may lead lo spurious associations resulting in erroneous conclusions.
Our results indicate that managers of firms that provide greater disclosure in the annual report benefit in terms of a lower cost of equity capital, amounting to about a 0.7 percentage point difference between the most and least forthcoming firms. However, greater other publications disclosure (which is more timely in nature) is associated with a higher cost of equity capital. The estimated magnitude of the effect is a L3 percentage point difference between the most and least forthcoming firms. Finally, we document no association between the level of investor relations activities and the cost of equity capital. Interestingly the results of our analysis provide some support for managers‘ claims that greater disclosure of more timely information in- creases their cost of equity capital, perhaps through greater stock return volatility. These claims are in sharp contrast to theoretical models of the relation between the cost of equity capital and disclosure and the bulk of the empirical research to date. Based on the results of our analysis we suggest that the conflicting conclusions of both practitioners and theory regarding the effect of disclosure on the cost of equity capital may have merit. However, future research directed at explaining the source of the positive association between the expected cost of equity capital and timely disclosure level is needed.