The impact of confucian culture on the cost of equity capital: The moderating role of marketization process

Abstract

The cost of equity capital (COEC) is a crucial component of investment decisions and corporate performance evaluations. In the process of corporate financing, an inadequate formal system may lead to the phenomenon of “Bad money drives out good”. While Confucian culture can compensate for the deficiency of the formal system by influencing the value orientation of the actors. Therefore, this paper examines the impact of Confucian culture on firms’ cost of equity capital (COEC) from an informal institutional perspective. Our study presents robust findings that firms headquartered in areas with strong Confucian culture have lower costs of equity capital, and the marketization process has a moderating effect on the relationship between Confucian culture and the COEC. The impact of Confucian culture on the COEC of firms is mainly achieved through three ways: reducing information risk, reducing business risk and mitigating agency problems. Further, foreign cultural shocks will weaken the relationship between Confucian culture and the COEC. These results remain robust after controlling for the endogeneity problem. This study indicates that Confucian culture, as an invisible complementary governance mechanism of the formal system, plays an important and positive role in “reducing the COEC”.