Board Diversity and Cost of Equity (CoE)
67 Pages Posted: 9 Jul 2020
Date Written: May 26, 2020
Abstract
We examine the effects of board diversity on corporate cost of equity (CoE). Using a composite index for diversity, we find that greater diversity leads to lower CoE. In further analysis, we report that this association is more prominent when the firm is experiencing lower internal (or external) monitoring or facing higher agency issues or suffering from greater financial constraints. Our results are robust to, e.g. propensity score matching; instrumental variable approach; use of alternate measures of CoE; use of additional (possibly influential omitted) variables, and various other sensitivity and endogeneity tests.
Keywords: Diversity, Board of Directors, Governance, Cost of Equity (CoE)
JEL Classification: G30, G32, G34
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation