Accounting Standards, Cost of Capital, Resource Allocation, and Welfare in a Large Economy
在资本资产定价模型框架下，研究会计准则质量如何通过影响投资门槛利率，进而影响实际投资和福利，发现改进会计准则会扩大实体经济并改变资本配置，但某些风险等级的企业资本成本上升、价值下降。
ABSTRACT In an extended capital asset pricing model (CAPM) setting, I examine how the quality of accounting standards affects real investment and welfare through its impact on investment hurdle rates. In this model, cash flow uncertainty arises from two fundamental sources relating, respectively, to economic performance and accounting measurement errors, but they combine into a single market factor for asset pricing. Accounting standards matter to real investment not only because information quality affects the required risk premiums on individual projects relative to a given market factor, but also because information quality affects the aggregate investment level and, hence, the market factor itself. I show that improving accounting standards causes both an expansion of the real economy and a shift in capital allocation across firms. While welfare increases as a result, firms in certain risk classes end up with higher costs of capital and lower values, some of which are crowded out from the economy. The study also lends insights into how the real and financial impacts of accounting standards depend on a firm's accounting and economic characteristics.