Estimating the Expected Cost of Equity Capital Using Analysts' Consensus Forecasts

In this study, we develop a technique for estimating a firm's expected cost of equity capital derived from its stock price and analysts' consensus forecasts. Our estimation method based on the residual income valuation model builds on Gebhardt/Lee/Swaminathan (2001) and Easton/Taylor/ShroffSougiannis (2002), but extends and refines their approaches by explicitly allowing daily estimation and using only publicly available information at that estimation date. We apply this technique to estimate the expected cost of equity capital at the market, industry and individual firm level using historical German data from 1989-2002 and examine firm characteristics which have been systematically related to these estimated return expectations