Independent director attention and the cost of equity capital
研究发现，独立董事对公司的关注度越高，公司股权资本成本越低，且审计委员会董事的关注度作用更显著，其机制是通过有效监督提高会计信息质量。
Abstract We study the relation between independent director attention and the cost of equity capital. Masulis and Mobbs find that a director with multiple directorships distributes her time and effort (i.e., attention) unequally according to the relative prestige of each directorship. We investigate whether a firm's cost of equity capital reflects such unequal distribution of attention by its directors. We find that firms receiving more director attention are associated with a lower cost of equity capital. These firms also have higher accounting information quality. Moreover, the attention from audit committee directors matters more than that from other directors in reducing the cost of equity capital. Robustness checks show that the results are not driven by firm size. Overall, our evidence is consistent with director attention reducing the cost of equity capital through effective monitoring that increases accounting information quality.