Title: The association between disclosure level and cost of capital in an emerging market: evidence from Egypt

Authors: Hany Kamel; Tamer Shahwan

Addresses: Accounting and Information Systems Department, College of Business and Economics, Qatar University, P.O. Box 2713 Doha, Qatar ' Department of Accounting, Finance & Banking, College of Business Administration, Al Ain University of Science and Technology, P.O. Box 64141 Al Ain, UAE

Abstract: This paper aims to empirically investigate whether the cost of equity and debt capital is related to the extent of voluntary disclosure in the Egyptian stock market. Following the previous research, a disclosure index relevant to the Egyptian environment was developed and applied in OLS regressions, using information provided in the annual reports of 73 Egyptian listed companies. The results, however, indicate that there is no significant association between the level of voluntary disclosure, on the one hand, and the cost of equity capital and debt capital, on the other. This implies that Egyptian companies do not benefit from extensive voluntary disclosure in reducing the cost of equity or debt capital. Hence, the findings of this paper may be of interest to those academic researchers, practitioners and regulators who are interested in discovering the implications of extensive voluntary disclosure in the annual reports of an emerging market such as Egypt.

Keywords: voluntary disclosure; cost of capital; emerging economies; Egypt; cost of equity; debt capital; stock markets; annual reports.

DOI: 10.1504/AAJFA.2014.064173

Afro-Asian Journal of Finance and Accounting, 2014 Vol.4 No.3, pp.203 - 225

Received: 20 Sep 2013
Accepted: 28 Apr 2014

Published online: 30 Aug 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article