Business strategy and the cost of equity: the mediating role of accounting information quality

Purpose The study examines the mediating role of accounting information quality (AQ), a proxy for firms' information risk, in firms' business strategy and the cost of equity (COE) nexus to highlight how AQ provides a mechanism through which a company's business strategy affects its COE. Design/methodology/approach The research study utilises data from 12,100 firm-year observations of United States (US) non-financial firms from 2001 to 2017, drawn from multiple databases, and employs the bootstrapping method of mediation analysis to test the indirect effect of AQ on the business strategy–COE relationship. The authors rely on Miles and Snow's two pure business strategy typologies, prospectors and defenders and use innate accrual quality and implied COE models to measure AQ and COE, respectively. Findings The results suggest that AQ partially mediates the relationship between business strategy and COE. The authors document that while innovative-oriented prospector firms have a lower AQ and a higher implied COE, efficiency-oriented defenders are associated with a higher AQ and lower COE. The higher (lower) COE of prospector (defender) firms is observed to be partly due to their lower (higher) AQ. The results indicate that while the idiosyncratic risk implied in firms' strategic orientation can directly influence their COE, the business strategy implications on firms' COE can be indirect through their AQ, a source of information risk. Research limitations/implications Due to data limitation, it was not possible to measure all possible methods of measuring implied COE. Practical implications The paper highlights the role of firm's business strategy in pricing decisions by investors. Originality/value The paper contributes to the existing literature by providing evidence that AQ, a proxy for information risk, is a mechanism through which business strategy affects firms' COE. The authors thus complement extant literature to empirically test the information risk effect inherent in strategic orientation on security pricing.