IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/irvfin/v21y2021i2p699-713.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Financial disclosure readability and innovative firms' cost of debt

Author

Listed:
  • Arvid O. I. Hoffmann
  • Stefanie Kleimeier

Abstract

Innovative firms confront potential lenders with various risks, including possible innovation failure, uncertain R&D investment payoffs, cash flow volatility, and low collateral value of hard‐to‐value intangible assets. As a result, these firms might struggle to obtain financing. More readable financial disclosures could mitigate the informational risk around innovative firms' fundamentals, ease their monitoring by lenders, and thus ultimately reduce these firms' cost of debt. In this regard, we find that while all firms can overcome information uncertainty about their firm fundamentals and reduce their spreads by having more readable financial disclosures, there is an additional benefit in terms of readability further lowering the cost of debt for innovative firms. The additional benefit that innovative firms can achieve from having more readable financial disclosures, however, is limited to situations of more pronounced information asymmetry where there is no previous lending relationship.

Suggested Citation

  • Arvid O. I. Hoffmann & Stefanie Kleimeier, 2021. "Financial disclosure readability and innovative firms' cost of debt," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 21(2), pages 699-713, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:irvfin:v:21:y:2021:i:2:p:699-713
    DOI: 10.1111/irfi.12292
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/irfi.12292
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/irfi.12292?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hochberg, Yael V. & Serrano, Carlos J. & Ziedonis, Rosemarie H., 2018. "Patent collateral, investor commitment, and the market for venture lending," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 74-94.
    2. Ramana Nanda & William R. Kerr, 2015. "Financing Innovation," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 445-462, December.
    3. Graham, John R. & Li, Si & Qiu, Jiaping, 2008. "Corporate misreporting and bank loan contracting," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(1), pages 44-61, July.
    4. Bill Francis & Iftekhar Hasan & Ying Huang & Zenu Sharma, 2012. "Do Banks Value Innovation? Evidence from US Firms," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 41(1), pages 159-185, March.
    5. Bonsall, Samuel B. & Leone, Andrew J. & Miller, Brian P. & Rennekamp, Kristina, 2017. "A plain English measure of financial reporting readability," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 329-357.
    6. Tobias Berg & Anthony Saunders & Sascha Steffen, 2016. "The Total Cost of Corporate Borrowing in the Loan Market: Don't Ignore the Fees," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(3), pages 1357-1392, June.
    7. Hertzel, Michael G. & Officer, Micah S., 2012. "Industry contagion in loan spreads," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(3), pages 493-506.
    8. Ivashina, Victoria, 2009. "Asymmetric information effects on loan spreads," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(2), pages 300-319, May.
    9. Beyer, Anne & Cohen, Daniel A. & Lys, Thomas Z. & Walther, Beverly R., 2010. "The financial reporting environment: Review of the recent literature," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2-3), pages 296-343, December.
    10. Ertugrul, Mine & Lei, Jin & Qiu, Jiaping & Wan, Chi, 2017. "Annual Report Readability, Tone Ambiguity, and the Cost of Borrowing," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(2), pages 811-836, April.
    11. Samuel B. Bonsall & Brian P. Miller, 2017. "The impact of narrative disclosure readability on bond ratings and the cost of debt," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 608-643, June.
    12. Coles, Jeffrey L. & Daniel, Naveen D. & Naveen, Lalitha, 2008. "Boards: Does one size fit all," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 329-356, February.
    13. Lu, Chia-Wu & Chen, Tsung-Kang & Liao, Hsien-Hsing, 2010. "Information uncertainty, information asymmetry and corporate bond yield spreads," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(9), pages 2265-2279, September.
    14. Jun Qian & Philip E. Strahan, 2007. "How Laws and Institutions Shape Financial Contracts: The Case of Bank Loans," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(6), pages 2803-2834, December.
    15. Jie Hu & Guo Li & Feifei Zhu, 2017. "Regional Financial Developments and Research and Development Investment–Cash Flow Sensitivity: Evidence on Chinese Public High†Tech Companies," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 17(4), pages 627-643, December.
    16. Boot, Arnoud W. A., 2000. "Relationship Banking: What Do We Know?," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 7-25, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Liang, Qingwen & Yin, Yugang & Liu, Yahui & Zhao, Qicheng, 2024. "Narrative R&D disclosure and bank loans: Evidence from China," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 62(PB).
    2. Xiaojun Sun & Jing Tang & Shilong Li, 2022. "Promote Green Innovation in Manufacturing Enterprises in the Aspect of Government Subsidies in China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(13), pages 1-16, June.
    3. Bai, Min & Li, Shihe & Xu, Limin & Yu, Chia-Feng (Jeffrey), 2022. "How do overconfident CEOs respond to regulation fair disclosure? Evidence from financial report readability," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    4. Cunyi Yang & Conghao Zhu & Khaldoon Albitar, 2024. "ESG ratings and green innovation: A U‐shaped journey towards sustainable development," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(5), pages 4108-4129, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hoffmann, Arvid O.I. & Kleimeier, Stefanie, 2021. "How do banks finance R&D intensive firms? the role of patents in overcoming information asymmetry✰," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 38(C).
    2. Rjiba, Hatem & Saadi, Samir & Boubaker, Sabri & Ding, Xiaoya (Sara), 2021. "Annual report readability and the cost of equity capital," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    3. Paulo P. Alves & M. Ricardo Cunha & Luís K. Pacheco & João M. Pinto, 2022. "How Banks Price Loans for LBOs: an Empirical Analysis of Spread Determinants ," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 62(3), pages 163-200, December.
    4. Gang Wang & Yi Shen, 2023. "Did quantitative easing reduce the borrowing costs of firms? The risk‐taking channel," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 63(1), pages 507-536, March.
    5. He, Zhongda & Qiao, Guannan & Zhang, Le & Zhang, Wenrui, 2021. "Regulator supervisory power and bank loan contracting," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    6. Yan Alperovych & Anantha Divakaruni & Sophie Manigart, 2022. "Lending when relationships are scarce : The role of information spread via bank networks," Post-Print hal-04325549, HAL.
    7. Sheng Huang & Ruichang Lu & Anand Srinivasan, 2022. "Bank Dependence and Bank Financing in Corporate M&A," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(3), pages 2250-2283, March.
    8. Cao, Shijiao & Wang, Jianqiong & Zhou, Jianan, 2022. "Pricing like things alike: The role of financial statement comparability in bond pricing," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 428-447.
    9. Shen, Yi, 2022. "Labor unemployment insurance and bank loans," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    10. Alperovych, Yan & Divakaruni, Anantha & Manigart, Sophie, 2022. "Lending when relationships are scarce: The role of information spread via bank networks," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    11. Lebelle, Martin & Lajili Jarjir, Souad & Sassi, Syrine, 2022. "The effect of issuance documentation disclosure and readability on liquidity: Evidence from green bonds," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    12. Bosch, Oliver & Steffen, Sascha, 2011. "On syndicate composition, corporate structure and the certification effect of credit ratings," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 290-299, February.
    13. Mohammed Saharti & Sajid M. Chaudhry & Nisar Ahmad & Syed Mujahid Hussain, 2024. "Syndicated loans: mapping the trends, sources and intellectual evolution," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 62(4), pages 1569-1592, May.
    14. Wang, Lu & Su, Zhong-qin & Fung, Hung-Gay & Jin, Hong-min & Xiao, Zuoping, 2021. "Do CEOs with academic experience add value to firms? Evidence on bank loans from Chinese firms," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    15. Minxing Sun & Weike Xu, 2024. "Short selling and readability in financial disclosures: A controlled experiment," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 59(2), pages 265-292, May.
    16. Hasan, Iftekhar & Politsidis, Panagiotis N. & Sharma, Zenu, 2021. "Global syndicated lending during the COVID-19 pandemic," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    17. Chen, Jiayuan & Gong, Di & Muckley, Cal, 2020. "Stock market illiquidity, bargaining power and the cost of borrowing," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 181-206.
    18. Jung Koo Kang & Christopher D. Williams & Regina Wittenberg-Moerman, 2021. "CDS trading and nonrelationship lending dynamics," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 26(1), pages 258-292, March.
    19. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2018_018 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Young Sang Kim & Junyoup Lee & Ha-Chin Yi, 2021. "Is Foreign Exchange Risk Priced in Bank Loan Spreads?," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 57(3), pages 1061-1092, October.
    21. Sun, Li, 2023. "Asset redeployability and readability of annual report," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:irvfin:v:21:y:2021:i:2:p:699-713. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=1369-412X .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.