Prior literature finds that firms incur a lower cost of debt capital when they voluntarily disclose information. However, the economic literature demonstrates that creditors' lending standards become more stringent (lax) when credit is rationed (abundant) suggesting that they value voluntary disclosure from borrowers differentially across credit market regimes. I draw upon the economic and finance literature on credit rationing to test whether the effects of voluntary disclosure on firms' cost of debt capital is greater during periods of credit rationing. I provide some evidence that confirms this prediction. Moreover, I provide some evidence that this relation is stronger for smaller firms than larger firms during periods of credit rationing suggesting that creditors value voluntary disclosure more from firms that have fewer resources to cover the increased agency cost of lending during periods of credit rationing.

This study shows an economically significant relation between a firm’s environmental performance and its cost of debt. Firms that have poor environmental performance will face future environmental liabilities related to compliance and clean-up costs due to increasingly strict environmental laws and regulations. Under current U.S. law, environmental liabilities can impair the value of fixed assets, as environmental claims often take precedence over the claims of creditors. Thus, future environmental liabilities are of particular concern to creditors. Previous accounting research has shown that a firm’s market value of equity is significantly affected by its environmental performance. However, the same has yet to be shown for a firm’s cost of debt capital. This study focuses on a sample of U.S. pulp and paper firms. The results imply that the market applies an ‘environmental risk’ premium of thirty-eight basis points to the cost of debt capital for the average public firm in the U.S. pulp and paper industry, based on its environmental performance. Environmental performance is measured using the annual toxic release inventory of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. It is a measure of the amount of toxic chemicals released to land, air and water by a firm’s operating facilities. This paper adds to the literature, providing evidence that environmental performance is a value relevant measure with regards to creditors. Thus, recent calls in the United States for greater cooperation between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency should be addressed. These calls are for the reporting, on a firm-wide basis, of quantifiable data that is already required by the Environmental Protection Agency but is not typically available in detail in firms’ reports to investors.

This study shows an economically significant relation between a firm’s environmental performance and its cost of debt. Firms that have poor environmental performance will face future environmental liabilities related to compliance and clean-up costs due to increasingly strict environmental laws and regulations. Under current U.S. law, environmental liabilities can impair the value of fixed assets, as environmental claims often take precedence over the claims of creditors. Thus, future environmental liabilities are of particular concern to creditors. Previous accounting research has shown that a firm’s market value of equity is significantly affected by its environmental performance. However, the same has yet to be shown for a firm’s cost of debt capital. This study focuses on a sample of U.S. pulp and paper firms. The results imply that the market applies an ‘environmental risk’ premium of thirty-eight basis points to the cost of debt capital for the average public firm in the U.S. pulp and paper industry, based on its environmental performance. Environmental performance is measured using the annual toxic release inventory of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. It is a measure of the amount of toxic chemicals released to land, air and water by a firm’s operating facilities. This paper adds to the literature, providing evidence that environmental performance is a value relevant measure with regards to creditors. Thus, recent calls in the United States for greater cooperation between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency should be addressed. These calls are for the reporting, on a firm-wide basis, of quantifiable data that is already required by the Environmental Protection Agency but is not typically available in detail in firms’ reports to investors.

Essay 1 Abstract Prior research indicates that equity markets assign a higher valuation to firms that sustain a string of earnings increases (earnings string) and a string of meeting or beating analysts’ earnings expectations (MBE string). However, to date, there is little evidence on the response of debt investors when firms sustain a long string of meeting/beating earnings benchmarks. This study fills the gap in the literature by analyzing the impact of sustaining an earnings string/MBE string on the cost of debt. I find evidence of a positive (negative) association between the length of the earnings string/MBE string and the bond yield spreads (credit ratings). These results suggest that debt holders assess a higher risk to firms that sustain a string of earnings benchmarks and require a higher risk premium, contrary to equity holders, who reward firms that sustain a string of earnings benchmarks. Additional analyses indicate that this discrepancy is attributable to the different investor compositions between debt and equity markets. Essay 2 Abstract This study extends the existing literature by investigating the impact of sustaining a string of earnings increases (earnings string) on stock returns using the time-series asset pricing approach. Using both Fama-French (1993) three-factor and Carhart (1997) four-factor models, I find that the average abnormal return of a zero investment arbitrage portfolio that longs the highest earnings string portfolio and shorts the lowest earnings string portfolio is approximately negative 65 (75) basis points per month. These results provide further insight into the existing literature by demonstrating that earnings string firms initially experience higher stock returns. However, as earnings strings become longer, the market reaction becomes weaker.

Les trois essais, qui constituent les principales contributions théoriques et empiriques de cette thèse, sont présentés dans les chapitres1 à 3. Le chapitre 1 présente le premier essai intitulé « Relations politiques d'entreprise en Russie et leurs implications pour la performance et la rentabilité des entreprises ». Le chapitre 2 représente le deuxième essai intitulé « Banque et relations politiques en Russie et leurs implications pour les coûts au niveau de la dette ». Le chapitre 3 présente le troisième essai intitulé « Relations politiques d'entreprise en Russie et leurs implications pour l'activité d'acquisition au niveau de l'entreprise » Bien que développés séparément, ces chapitres sont interconnectés de façon cohérente, comme le montre la figure GI-1. Conceptuellement, la construction théorique principale dans ces trois chapitres est l'effet ultime que les liens politiques des entreprises ont sur la performance et la rentabilité des entreprises. Cet effet peut être étudié directement (pour obtenir une grande image de l'impact que ces différents types de liens politiques ont sur la rentabilité et la performance), et aussi indirectement (en examinant précisément les effets des différents types de liens politiques sur les déterminants de rentabilité et de performance). Plus précisément, le chapitre 1 aborde la grande image en régressant les ratios de rentabilité et de performance et de leurs déterminants fondamentaux sur différents types de relations politiques. Le chapitre 2 enquête précisément sur l'impact des différents types de relations politiques et bancaires sur le coût au niveau de la dette de l'entreprise, qui à son tour affecte la rentabilité et la performance, et le chapitre 3 examine les effets des différents types de liens politiques sur l'activité des acquisitions au niveau des entreprises qui potentiellement peuvent également affecter les ratios de rentabilité et de performance. Suite à ces trois chapitres, le mémoire se termine par une conclusion générale présentant les principales conclusions de cette thèse, les limites et les perspectives pour la recherche future. / This dissertation consists of three chapters representing three self-contained essays on the effects of corporate political connections on firm operational, financial, and investment activities. The research is based on a sample of Russian non-state-owned companies operating within the period of 2000-2013. Chapter 1 investigates the effect of corporate political connections on firm performance and profitability. I find that political connections to the executive branch of the central (federal) government positively affect connected firm’s return on sales, return on assets, return on equity and market-to-book ratio. These improvements are conditioned by better operating performance of the connected firm. At the same time financial and taxation costs are not seriously affected by political connections. Contrary to the effect of federal ties, connections to regional authorities bring more costs than benefits to the connected firms with both operating performance and overall performance indicators showing decline in presence of regional political ties. The latter effect can be explained by greater costs which regionally connected firms have to bear in order to contribute to the economic development of regions and provinces to which they are connected. Overall, Chapter 1 provides direct evidence on the effects of corporate political connections on firm profitability, performance, and their basic determinants, also showing that different types of connections differently affect performance. Chapter 2 examines the effect of corporate political and bank connections on firm-level cost of debt. I find that corporate connections to banks decrease cost of debt of a firm. However this effect works only if a firm has connections to a state-owned bank, not a private bank, and connections to a state-owned bank are to be maintained through a significant shareholder of the firm, not CEO, or board member. I also find that corporate connections to the executive branch of the central (federal) government decrease cost of debt. The latter effect works only if political connections are strong and cohesive enough, i.e. they were formed under circumstances that required high level of mutual trust and reliability between parties. Overall, the second chapter provides evidence that political and bank connections do really affect cost of debt and reveals important conditions under which connections can have an impact on this variable. Chapter 3 investigates the effect of corporate political connections on firm-level acquisitions activity. I find that political connections to central (federal) government positively affect firm’s propensity to purchase stakes in other firms. This effect works well in the domestic market, but not in the foreign markets. It does also work well with regard to acquisitions of stakes in the open market, but, ironically, not in the process of privatization. At the same time I find that political connections to regional governments are negatively associated with the probability of purchasing a stake by the acquirer. The latter effect may have an explanation that in a “small world” of regional political and business elites it is risky for participants to violate the regional equilibrium of wealth and power, thus firms demonstrate acquisitions activity levels lower than that of the reference group of unconnected firms. Overall, the third chapter provides evidence on the effects of corporate political connections on bidder’s acquisitions activity, showing, however, that different types of connections may differently impact bidder’s propensity to acquire stakes in other firms.

Environmental remediation liabilities are generated primarily as a result of past actions by a firm. The most important of these liabilities for domestic U.S. firms are related to Superfund sites as designated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). These liabilities are important for domestic firms because of their size, which is estimated to be approximately $300 billion (Congressional Budget Office 1994) and because of public concern for the environment. This study examines the relation among bond ratings, bond yields, and EPA-based estimates of contingent environmental remediation liabilities to test if the relationships hold as theory implies it would. Extant theory suggests that financial variables, such as environmental remediation liabilities, have incremental explanatory power beyond the information included in bond ratings for bond yield. The purpose of this study is to determine the importance of external estimates of a firm's contingent environmental liabilities for a firm's cost of debt. In addition, the manner in which a firm's contingent environmental liabilities are included in the costs of debt is examined in this study. The results of this study indicate that external estimates for environmental liabilities are associated with the bond ratings and bond yield for a data set of new bond issues collected from the period 1995 to 1997. Despite that firms are increasing their recognition of environmental liabilities, either due to regulatory pressure or other factors, the measures based on EPA data still have significant explanatory power. The results imply that firms are either still lagging in appropriate recognition or that the external measures proxy for amounts imputed by the capital markets for some probable unspecified future costs. The latter explanation is supported by additional evidence in this study that the largest monetary measure of the liability is the most significantly associated with bond ratings and bond yields. Further, the results indicate that the external estimates are incorporated in bond ratings as part of the firm's default risk and have no direct influence over bond yield beyond that included in the bond ratings. This implies that bond ratings are particularly important for any evaluation of investment in debt securities from firms that have contingent environmental liabilities. / Ph. D.

Yes / The Paris Agreement, signed in 2015, sets ambitious goals for diminishing greenhouse gas emissions and restricting the rise in global temperature to achieve a less carbon-intensive and climate-resilient global economy. The Paris Agreement marked a defining moment in the worldwide response to global warming and has significantly affected the financial sector. Given this background, this research explores the effects of carbon risk on the cost of debt (CoD) in 1428 listed firms across seven economies from 2011 to 2020. The paper also reflects the post-Paris Agreement’s involvement and the ESG factors’ moderating effect in the empirical models. The study finds a significant impact of carbon risk on CoD following the implementation of the Paris Agreement. Notably, companies with higher carbon risk face higher borrowing rates. However, the effect of ESG on moderating the relationship between carbon risk and CoD is found to be insignificant. Further analyses confirm this finding, as individual pillars of ESG (governance and social aspects) also show insignificant moderating effects.

The paper empirically tests the relationship between earnings volatility and cost of debt with a sample of more than 77,000 Swedish limited companies over the period 2006 to 2013 observing more than 677,000 firm years. As called upon by many researchers recently that there is very limited evidence of the association between earnings volatility and cost of debt this paper contributes greatly to the existing literature of earnings quality and debt contracts, especially on the consequence of earnings quality in the debt market. Earnings volatility is a proxy used for earnings quality while cost of debt is a component of debt contract. After controlling for firms’ profitability, liquidity, solvency, cashflow volatility, accruals volatility, sales volatility, business risk, financial risk and size this paper studies the effect of earnings volatility measured by standard deviation of Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA) on Cost of Debt. Overall finding suggests that lenders in Sweden does take earnings volatility into consideration while determining cost of debt for borrowers. But a deeper analysis of various industries suggest earnings volatility is not consistently used by lenders across all the industries. Lenders in Sweden are rather more sensitive to borrowers’ financial risk across all the industries. It may also be stated that larger borrowers tend to secure loans at a lower interest rate, the results are consistent with majority of the industries. Swedish debt market appears to be well prepared for financial crises as the debt crisis seems to have no or little adverse effect borrowers’ cost of capital. This study is the only empirical evidence to study the association between earnings volatility and cost of debt. Prior indirect research suggests earnings volatility has a negative effect on cost debt (i.e. an increase in earnings volatility will increase firm’s cost of debt). Our direct evidence from the Swedish debt market is consistent for some industries including media, real estate activities, transportation & warehousing, and other consumer services.

In this study, I use Section 404(b) of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act as an exogenous shock to examine the effect of auditors’ assessment of internal control over financial reporting (ICFR) on audit fees, cost of debt, and net value of compliance between 2002 and 2010. Using firms themselves as their own control, this study conducts firm-fixed effects analyses to explore the close causal effect of SOX 404(b) on compliance costs (proxied by audit fees), compliance benefit (proxied by cost of debt) and net compliance benefit (proxied by Tobin’s q). Through analyzing how SOX 404(b) affects firms’ compliance cost, compliance benefit, and net compliance benefit, the results suggest that SOX 404(b) decreases firms’ cost of debt, but also imposes compliance costs. Overall, SOX 404(b) increases firm value premium by around 8.63%. The study also examines whether the 2007 reforms have achieved their purpose by comparing audit fees before and after the 2007 reforms.

文獻探討中有提到許多公司治理與公司治理衡量指標之關係，且也有人做有關資訊揭露(為公司治理衡量指標之一部分)與負債資金成本之研究，即公司治理之衡量指標可代表公司治理之好壞，那公司治理與負債資金成本有無直接相關呢？可否直接從公司治理之好壞看出其負債資金成本之高低呢？並無相關文獻探討有關內容。而在世界銀行公司治理架構中，債權人也是公司治理的一份子，因此本研究欲探討對債權人而言，公司治理的好壞會不會影響其對公司收取的利息，也就是公司之負債資金成本會否受公司治理好壞之影響，以補足公司治理架構之研究。 本研究樣本之選取期間為民國八十五年至民國九十一年間，共7 個年度。共167個觀察值。本研究使用複迴歸分析，對各項變數進行分析，以了解公司治理之特性與負債資金成本的關聯性，其結果如下： 　　解釋變數中，董監持股比、機構持股比及董事長兼任總經理方向不僅與預期相同，結果也顯著。公司之揭露程度方向雖與預期相同，但不顯著。 可能原因為，公司治理為近年來才開始重視的議題，且通常是股東比較會在意公司的公司治理好壞，債權人可能還未意識到公司之公司治理好壞影響該公司甚大，其在考慮是否將資金貸予公司時，可能還未將公司之公司治理好壞因素考慮在內。但一家公司能否永續經營，公司治理之好壞應該是很好的判斷標準，因此，預期未來債權人也會意識到這種情形，在考慮是否將資金貸予公司時，應會將公司之公司治理好壞考慮進去。所以，若公司想在現今競爭激烈的環境下生存，首要之務就是將公司的公司治理做好，既利人又利己，何樂而不為呢？ 關鍵字：公司治理、負債資金成本 / A survey of literature reveals that management performance is positively correlated with the quality of corporate governance and negatively correlated with the cost of debt. However, no research has been conducted to evaluate the relationship between the quality of corporate governance and the cost of debt. In the corporate governance framework formulated by the World Bank, creditor is one of the corporate governance factors. Therefore, it is hypothesized that the quality of corporate governance is negatively correlated with the cost of debt. Sample firms are selected from companies issuing bond during 1996 to 2002, with a total of 167 firm/year observations. The multi-variate linear regression model is employed to carry out the analysis. The results indicate that the director’s shareholdings, the institutional investor’s shareholdings and the dual position of board chairman and presidency are all significantly correlated with the cost of debt at anticipated direction, which support the hypothesis. The financial transparency is also negatively correlated with the cost of debt as anticipated but not at a significant level. Overall, it appears that the creditors take into consideration the quality of corporate governance in making their lending decisions. Key words：corporate governance, the cost of debt.