The quote shows a strong relation to the efficient market hypothesis (EMH), as it implies that the costs of capital are dependent from the amount of information given by the company. According to my opinion, agency theory is a good explanation for costs of capital. Agency theory defines contracts as under which one party – called principal – engages another party – called the agent – to perform service on the principal’s behalf. Concluding, the principal delegates decision-making authority to the agent. Both sides of the contract are utility maximisers and the agent will not necessarily act in the principal’s best interests. This leads to the rise of agency costs. Agency costs are the welfare …show more content…
Then, comparability of information needs an explanation. This leads into either one standard for accounting procedures or different standards with firms obliged to mention which standard they have chosen. In the past, business fought constantly against the uniformation of standards and the problem of the latter suggestion is that it needs skilled users to evaluate the impact of the different standards on the financial statement. As only a limited group will be able to do this, the number of possible financers is reduced. Capital could become more expensive since in free market systems a broader supply of capital should result into lower prices for capital and the reverse effect is true. Further, accounting has difficulties to clearly measure performance and the value of assets. Therefore, many different methods exist as historical cost, present value, current replacement costs, net realisable value, and deprival value accounting and all are reasonable in their approaches. Trust of the public means more trust in managements’ behaviour. This is reflected in less monitoring and reduced bonding costs. The former reduction is obvious and with good experience in more trustworthy relationships the monitoring mechanisms should decrease. As these costs decrease, so should the costs of capital decrease caused by a decrease of interest expense or dividend payout. A capital market’s development is dependent from investors’ trust
2. Establish how the cost of equity is affected by capital structure decisions by defining financial risk and introducing the levered beta CAPM equation
The basis of Efficient Market theory is considered to have a gap in theory and practice that
SFAC No. 8 addresses the cost constraint on useful financial reporting, “Cost is a pervasive constraint that standard setters, as well as providers and users of financial information, should keep in mind when considering the benefits of a financial reporting requirement.” (SFAC No. 8 BC 3.47) However, the ability to place a dollar value and fully enumerate a cost or benefit is almost an impossible task for standard-setters. Additionally, there is no way to successfully identify and measure all of the economic consequences associated with a new standard. The FASB should be applauded though for advancing uniformity in accounting standards, however; uniform financial reporting suggests a one size fits all approach. “Smaller, non-publicly listed firms (and their auditors) argue that accounting standards are formulated mainly for larger, publicly traded firms” and that “compliance costs are disproportionately higher and the
The IOSCO plan does not cover accounting standards.(66) These standards are important for providing financial statements in a scheme that are prepared in the similar manner as those by issuers from other countries. The development of international accounting standards is the subject of a distinct project by IOSCO, and many accounting professionals who are concomitant with that undertaking are hopeful that a satisfactory solution is within reach.(67) Supposing, however, that an agreement is possible on a core set of financial standards and that they too are embraced by securities regulators as compulsory for foreign issuers, the road to commonality has at least two other impediments.
managers may not directly set the cost of capital, they play a large role in determining the capital structure
Further influence of EMH on financial practice seems to be active in attitude of investors towards diversified portfolios. As theory implicate “public information cannot be used to earn abnormal returns” (Arnold, 2009) thus traders are becoming more sceptical about outcomes of fundamental analysis. The most reasonable action is to create well-matched selection of securities that would rule out analysis and transaction costs, making returns proportionally greater. The vast majority of investors were convinced by those trends and decided
Efficient Market Hypothesis has been controversial issues among researcher for decades. Until now, there is no united conclusion whether capital markets are efficiency or not. In 1960s, Fama (1970) believed that market is very efficient despite there are some trivial contradicted tests. Until recently, both empirical and theatrical efficient market hypothesis was being disputed by behavior finance economist. They have found that investor have psychological biases and found evidences that some stocks outperform other stocks. Moreover, there are evidences prove that market are not efficient for instance financial crisis, stock market bubble, and some investor can earn abnormal return which happening regularly in stock markets all over the world. Therefore, the purpose of this essay is to demonstrate that Efficient Market Hypothesis in stock (capital) markets does not exist in the real world by proofing four outstanding unrealistic conditions that make market efficient: information is widely available and cost-free, investor are rational, independent and unbiased, There is no liquidity problem in stock market, and finally stock prices has no pattern.
Last but not least important, an efficient capital market is one in which stock prices fully reflect all available information. However, the paradox is that since information is reflected in security prices quickly, knowing information when it is released does an investor little good. Furthermore, it is impossible to create a portfolio which would earn extraordinary risk adjusted return. As a consequence, all the technical and fundamental analysis are useless, no one can consistently outperform the market, and new
Conflicts between stockholders and creditors Conflict between shareholders and creditors is common for the company which use debt capital to form an optimum capital structure. As mentioned earlier, agency relation exist when one party works as an agent of the principal. In an organization management
In modern financial economics, one of the most essential constructions , which plays a significant role in financing strategy, is efficient market hypothesis (henceforth EMH). Despite the fact that its first theoretical formulation, which was founded by Paul
`A market is efficient with respect to a particular set of information if it is impossible to make abnormal profits by using this set of information to formulate buying and selling decisions.’
Furthermore, the idea of accounting standards made accountability for firms’ finances simpler, as numbers could more accurately be tracked, making issues like stocks and taxes less convoluted from company to company. In theory, if companies’ numbers were not comparable, then the stock markets would be extremely inefficient or simply obsolete.
A finance professor and a student are walking down the street when they spot a $100 dollar bill on the pavement. The student bends down to pick it up, but the professor says to him ‘Don’t bother – if it was a real $100 dollar bill, it wouldn’t be there”. This story encapsulates the theory behind the Efficient Market Hypothesis that all markets are efficient.
If the firms funding requirements are larger than their retained earnings, they must issue debt as this is preferred to issuing equity. Based on this theory, a firm’s financing policies could be viewed as signalling management’s view of the firm’s stock value (Wang & Lin 2010).Myers and Majluf (1984) also add that if firms issued no new securities but only used its retained earning to support the investment opportunities, the information asymmetric could be resolved. This suggests that issuing equity turn out to be more expensive as asymmetric information insiders and outsiders increase. Large firms should then issue debt to avoid selling under priced securities. As the requirement for external financing increases, businesses will work down the pecking order, from safe to riskier debt, perhaps to convertible securities or preferred stock, and finally to equity as a last resort. Each firm's debt ratio therefore reflects its cumulative requirement for external financing (Myers 2001).The pecking order theory clarifies why the bulk of external financing comes from debt. It also describes why organizations that are more profitable borrow less: since their goal debt ratio is, low-in the pecking order they do not have a goal since profitable firms have more internal financing available.
Therefore accounting methods are very much important in measuring the profit of the company and company must prepare their finical report by using the fair value and historical cost method simultaneously. However, true financial position of the company or business can be easily calculated by using the accounting methods that are more reliable and accurate. Therefore companies must use both historical and fairly value method to know the actual financial position of the company.