Essays on life cycle, voluntary disclosure and the cost of capital of brazilian companies

• Ano de defesa: 2015
• Autor(a) principal: Novaes, Paulo Victor Gomes
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo; BR; Mestrado em Ciências Contábeis; Centro de Ciências Jurídicas e Econômicas; UFES; Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Contábeis
• Palavras-chave em Português: Voluntary disclosure; Cost of equity capital; Implied cost of capital; Firm life cicle; Custo de capital próprio; Custo de capital implícito; Ciclo de vida da empresa; Ciências Contábeis; 657
• Link de acesso: http://repositorio.ufes.br/handle/10/1681

This thesis investigates how life cycle stages impact on voluntary disclosure, cost of equity capital and also on the relationship between them. Using a sample of non-financial Brazilian listed firms covered by analysts between 2008 and 2014, and following the model by Gebhardt et al. (2001) to develop the Implied Cost of Capital (ICC) using I/B/E/S database, from Thomson Reuters®, I find that companies on average are benefitted by the reduction of the cost of capital via improvement in voluntary information level. Using Dickinson’s (2001) life cycle measure, I find that voluntary disclosure level grows until reaching the maturity phase and then it declines. Moreover, the ICC significantly differs across life cycle stages. However, I do not find differences among growth, maturity and shake-out, although the level of the ICC fades out after leaving the initial stage and it increases again in decline stage. Finally, I find that the improvement of voluntary disclosure level in growth and maturity stages is better compensated with more reduction in cost of capital. The results for voluntary disclosure are shown to be robust using a series of sensitivity tests, however the expectation about cost of capital did not hold using different proxies.