Customer referencing and capital market benefits: Evidence from the cost of equity
研究发现，企业在财务报告中提及知名非主要客户（客户引用）能降低其股权成本，这种自愿披露能吸引投资者关注并获得客户认证，尤其对缺乏大客户、客户声誉高于自身或面临高竞争的企业效果更明显。
Abstract Customer referencing is a strategy that firms can use to disclose their connections with reputable customers as a means of enhancing their own reputations. We study the capital market benefits of naming reputable nonmajor customers in firms' financial reports to provide empirical evidence on whether this form of customer referencing has important practical implications. We predict and find that firms enjoy a lower cost of equity when they engage in customer referencing in their financial reports, consistent with the argument that this form of voluntary disclosure increases investor attention and customer certification. In cross‐sectional analyses, we predict and find that the benefits of customer referencing are more pronounced for firms that (1) lack major customers or reputable major customers, (2) name customers whose reputations exceed their own, and (3) face higher competition. Overall, our study provides evidence that communicating certain interorganizational connections can generate capital market benefits for disclosing firms.