Intellectual Capital Disclosure and Its Impact on the Cost of Equity Capital

In a knowledge-intensive economy, a company’s intellectual capital contributes to its success and its ultimate value. Most of these intangible assets cannot be included into the company’s balance sheet and intellectual capital disclosures in the annual report and financial statements have been largely voluntary. one reason for disclosing such information is to reduce the information gap between companies and investors and thus to reduce the cost of capital. This paper investigates the relationship between intellectual capital disclosure and voluntary financial disclosure and the cost of equity capital in the firms listed on Tehran Stock Exchange. Intellectual capital disclosure and its components and also voluntary financial disclosure is measured using a checklist developed by Li et al (2008) and Gray et al (1995) and using content analysis of annual report of 85 companies in 2010. Cost of equity capital is measured using PEG model of Easton (2004) and hypothesis are analyzed by T test, Pearson correlation and regression analysis. The results of this study indicate that larger firms disclose more information about their intellectual capital and its components. Also results show that there is a negative and insignificant relationship between intellectual capital disclosure and its components, which are human capital disclosure, structural capital disclosure and relational disclosure and voluntary financial disclosure and the cost of equity. Also there is no significantly different cost of equity capital between firms which make greater levels of intellectual capital disclosure and firms making lower intellectual capital disclosures. Interaction between intellectual capital disclosure and voluntary financial disclosure has no significant effect on cost of equity capital.