Examining the Effect of Ownership Dispersion on the Relation between Voluntary Disclosure and Cost of Equity Capital

The effect of information disclosure procedures and policies on the cost of equity capital is one of the important issues which always is considered by regulators, entities and financial and accounting researchers. This relation is affected by various contextual characteristics (e.g. ownership structures, legislating system, economy and so on). The aim of this research is to examine the effect of ownership dispersion on the relation between voluntary disclosure and cost of equity capital. In doing so, the number of 610 firms of TSE listed Company were selected via systematic screening method. Data for variables were collected from several databases, such as CODAL, Central Bank, TSE-Client 2 software, and Statistical Centre of Iran. These data were analysed by the regressions model. The evidence shows that voluntary disclosure, ownership dispersion, and their interaction have significantly negative relations with the cost of equity capital. These findings indicate that an increase in voluntary disclosure and ownership dispersion causes a decrease in cost of equity capital. In addition, ownership structure intensifies the negative effect of voluntary disclosure on the cost of equity capital.