The effect of accounting information quality on the companies`s cost of equity, considering the role of information symmetry and comparability of financial statements

The purpose of the present study is to explain the effect of accounting information quality on corporate equity cost and to investigate the moderating role of information asymmetry and the simultaneous moderating role of this variable and the comparability of financial statements in this context. The research timeframe for this period is 5 years from the beginning of 2013 until the end of 2017 and the sample includes 91 companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange. Multivariate regression was used for statistical analysis. The results of the analysis indicate that the quality of accounting information has an adverse effect on equity cost, so that the higher the quality of accounting information, the lower the cost of equity; and vice versa. Also, information asymmetry has a direct relationship with this effect. But the simultaneous impact of comparability of financial statements and information asymmetry on the impact of accounting information quality on equity costs is not confirmed. The results of the first two hypotheses are similar to those of Emof et al. (2018), which examined the effect of accounting information quality on equity cost in the United States, but the third hypothesis suggests that it is inconsistent.