| Summary: | 碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 會計學系碩士班 === 94 === The thesis attempts to investigate the effects of interest conflicts among management, shareholders and creditors on the earnings attributes and cost of capital. The sample consists of observations selected from listed and over-counter companies in Taiwan from 1999 to 2002. This study uses the dividend payout ratio, the long-term debt ratio, and the standard deviation of return on assets to capture the degree of interest conflicts between shareholders and creditors. The proxies for the conflicts of interest between insiders and outside shareholder include the dividend payout ratio, the percentage of the shares held by insiders, the percentage of shares collateralized by directors, and the shareholding by institutional investors. The examined earnings attributes include accrual quality, value relevance, timeliness, and conservatism. Moreover, this study uses the effective interest rate of interest-bearing liabilities to measure the cost of debt capital and uses the industry-adjusted earnings-to-price ratio to measure the cost of equity capital.
The empirical results are summarized as follows.
First, as the degree of interest conflicts between shareholders and creditors get worse, i.e., as the dividend payout ratio get lower, the long-term debt ratio increases, or the operation risk gets higher, its costs of debt capital will be higher. Moreover, the better attributes of accrual quality and value relevance may help to mitigate the agency conflicts of debt and thus reduce the costs of debt capital.
Second, as the degree of interest conflicts between insiders and outside shareholders get worse, that is, as the percentage of the shares held by insiders increase, or the percentage of shares collateralized by directors is higher, the cost of equity capital will get higher. Moreover, the better earnings attributes of accrual quality and conservatism may help to mitigate agency conflicts of equity and thus reduce firm’s costs of equity capital.
Finally, it finds that the interest conflicts of agency relationship affect the earnings attributes after controlling other variables.
Overall, this study shows that by signaling with desirable earnings attributes, corporate insiders can effectively mitigate the agency conflicts and thus reduce the cost of capital.
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