Do shareholder protection laws affect the corporate cost of capital? To identify the causal impact of shareholder protection laws on firms’ implied cost of capital, we exploit the staggered adoption across 23 US states of universal-demand laws, which place significant obstacles to derivative lawsuits and thus undermine shareholders’ litigation rights. Using a sample of public US firms between 1985 and 2013, we find that weakened litigation rights for shareholders materially increase firms’ implied cost of capital. We further show that the curtailing of shareholders’ rights leads to a deterioration in information quality, increased risk-taking, and more severe insider expropriation, all of which contribute to heightened financing costs. Overall, our findings indicate that weakened litigation rights for shareholders lead them to face greater agency conflicts and higher market risk, which ultimately translates into higher required returns.

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股东保护与资本成本

股东保护法是否会影响公司的资本成本？为了确定股东保护法对公司隐含资本成本的因果影响，我们利用了美国23个州普遍采用的法律的交错采用法，这对衍生诉讼构成重大障碍，从而损害了股东的诉讼权。我们使用1985年至2013年间的美国上市公司样本，发现削弱的股东诉讼权会实质性增加公司的隐含资本成本。我们进一步表明，减少股东权利会导致信息质量下降，冒险精神增加以及内部人被没收的情况更加严重，所有这些都会导致融资成本的上升。总体，