불성실공시가 타인자본비용에 미치는 영향

This study examines the effect of unfaithful disclosure on the cost of debt using a sample of firms that were designated as “Unfaithful disclosure firm” on the Korea Exchange(KRX) market from 1999 to 2005. “Unfaithful disclosure firms” are expected to have low disclosure quality resulting in high cost of debt. Two alternative measures of the cost of debt are considered here: (1) the credit ratings provided by the credit rating agency and (2) borrowing rates calculated by using financial statements.The result of empirical tests shows that the credit ratings of firms which are designated as “Unfaithful disclosure firm” are significantly lower than those of firms which are not. The result also indicates “Unfaithful disclosure firms” have on average 1.4% point higher borrowing rate than their counterparts. This evidence supports that being designated as an “Unfaithful disclosure firm” by a regulatory body is perceived as a bad news that signals poor disclosure quality by the stock market participants, and eventually results in higher cost of debt. This finding is consistent with the argument that a policy of timely and detailed and detailed disclosures reduces lenders’ and underwriters’ perception of default risk for the disclosing firm, reducing its cost of debt. Specifically, the more frequently a firm is designated as “Unfaithful disclosure firm”, the higher the degree of the decrease in credit rating and the increase in borrowing rate is. Also the degree of the increase in borrowing rate is significantly greater in the case of KSE firms designated as “Unfaithful disclosure firm” compared to KOSDAQ firms. This result implies that because investors have higher expectation on the fairness and reliability of KSE firms’ disclosure compared to KOSDAQ firms, a KSE firm’s being designated as an “Unfaithful disclosure firm” has a more negative effect on the firm’s cost of debt than a KOSDAQ firm.