Cost of capital and voluntary disclosure of integrated reporting: the role of institutional factors

• Autor(a) principal: Zaro, Elise Soerger
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Texto Completo: http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/12/12136/tde-24052019-121105/
• topic: Cost of debt; Cost of equity; Custo de capital próprio; Custo de dívida; Fatores institucionais; Institutional factors; Integrated reporting; Integrated thinking; Pensamento integrado; Relato integrado

Integrated Reporting is an initiative that encourages companies to analyze their business model in a holistic way. This process includes active consideration of financial and non-financial perspectives in order to understand all the capital generated, maintained and destroyed by the company over time. It allows companies to understand their activities, considering all factors used or affected, as well as the organization\'s entire context, causing the concept of Integrated Thinking to be ingrained in the company culture. Based on the Systems Theory, the integrated analysis of financial and non-financial aspects - as proposed by - can lead to different conclusions than with separate analyses because of the connections and interrelations between those two aspects. Application of the Integrated Thinking concept may result in two main advantages for the company: 1) an improvement in its management processes, especially with respect to non-financial capitals; and 2) a decrease in information asymmetry. Therefore, based on the Voluntary Disclosure Theory, these two factors may result in economic benefits for the organization. Thus, this research investigates how the cost of equity and cost of debt relate to the Integrated Reporting disclosure, and what is the impact of institutional factors on that relationship. A global sample of 25,311 firm-year observations, from 2010 to 2017, was analyzed employing a method that considered two dimensions: 1) Treatment: voluntary adopters of Integrated Reporting compared to a control group selected by a PSM (Propensity Score Matching) procedure; and 2) Time: both groups were compared in the periods before and after the adoption. Results indicated that the Integrated Reporting disclosure is negatively related to the cost of equity. The results are robust after controlling for several firm-level and country-level factors, and by industry. Further analyses showed that this negative effect is more prevalent for companies with high enforcement environments and revealed that companies in a Shareholder Oriented environment achieved a greater reduction in the cost of equity, when compared to companies in a Stakeholder Oriented environment. Evidence also showed that debtholders and equity holders respond differently to the Integrated Reporting disclosure. Despite the difference in cost of equity for companies adopting Integrated Reporting, limited evidence of a relationship between cost of debt and disclosure was found, even when subsamples were analyzed in view of institutional factors. Further investigations on the effect of assurance in the relationship between cost of debt and disclosure were conducted, uncovering that companies in a High Enforcement environment that assure their CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) information showed a lower cost of debt. This study contributes to the literature of Integrated Reporting by showing how it relates to cost of equity and cost of debt, considering a global sample of voluntary adopters. The study also analyzed the impact of institutional factors in this relationship, employing a robust method of analysis that differentiates it from other studies.