The effect of company efficiency on debt cost using intellectual capital

The survival of companies depends on the available financial resources. One of the most important sources of finance is debt financing. Increasing investment in intellectual capital and knowledge assets and its effective and efficient use, by creating and increasing the value of the company and improving its performance can be considered as one of the ways to reduce the cost of debt. This study ranks the performance of companies operating in the Tehran Stock Exchange using data envelopment analysis based on intellectual capital and examines the effect of the obtained performance rating on the debt cost of these companies. In order to calculate the performance efficiency rank, the Anderson-Peterson model of data envelopment analysis was used. The performance efficiency rank is as an independent variable and the debt cost is as dependent variable. Also, company size, financial leverage, board size, percentage of board independence and percentage of institutional shareholders are considered as control variables.Findings show that the performance efficiency rating and debt cost have an inverse and significant relationship with each other. Also, as financial leverage increases, so does the cost of debt. The percentage of institutional shareholders and the size of the company are inversely related to the cost of debt.