The Nature Of Ultimate Ownership?Accounting Information Comparability And Cost Of Equity Financing

The comparability of accounting information,one of the important characteristics of accounting information quality,plays an important role in the capital market.Its improvement can alleviate the internal and external information asymmetry of the enterprises,and help the enterprises to create a good financing environment;it can also help accounting information users to compare the economic situation between different enterprises and improve the efficiency of their decision-making.At present,due to the difficulty in the measurement of comparability of accounting information,the empirical research in this field is relatively lacking in domestic academic circles.At the same time,in the academic world,the research of factors affecting financing costs is also a hot topic.Based on this situation,this paper studies the relationship between the comparability of accounting information at the enterprise level and the cost of equity capital.And then,combined with the different nature of the ultimate ownership of listed companies in China,this paper further explores the affect between accounting information comparability and equity financing cost which is caused by the difference in the nature of ultimate ownership.This paper mainly uses the research method including normative research and empirical research.To start with,the paper theoretically analyzes the rationality of the above-mentioned relationship and affect.Then,it selects 2089 samples of A-share listed companies in thedomestic Shenzhen-Shanghai main board stock market during 2011-2016.Based on the data from the samples,the paper uses the method of Andréet al.(2012)to measure the comparability of accounting information and the PEG model and OJ model to measure the cost of equity financing,and conducts empirical analysis with the multiple regression model.The conclusions are as follows:(1)Under the other conditions being equal,there is a negative correlation between the comparability of accounting information and the cost of equity financing in listed companies,that is,in listed companies,the stronger(weaker)the comparability of accounting information is,the Lower(higher)the cost of equity financing will become.(2)Compared with state-owned listed companies,the negative correlation between accounting information comparability and equity financing cost is stronger in non-state-owned listed companies.Based on this conclusions,this paper believes that,in order to reduce the cost of equity financing by improving the comparability of accounting information and to eliminate the impact caused by the nature of ultimate ownership,we should take some measures as following: strengthen the training of accounting personnel,establish an effective supervision system,design a reasonable incentive and punishment mechanism,strengthen the standardization of accounting policies and methods' selection,deepen the reform of state-owned companies,etc.