In a prior post I discussed why the expense of debt has tiny influence on investments. What about the cost of equity? Firms usually use (much) much more equity than debt to finance their investments. So the price of equity need to matter far more. In a current study , Murray Frank and Tao Shen investigate how the expense of equity and the weighted typical expense of capital (WACC) influence investments of US firms. Remarkably, they locate that the price of equity and the WACC are positively related to corporate investments. Firms with a greater estimated price of equity and WACC tend to invest considerably much more. That is a quite strange outcome. We would anticipate firms with a higher cost of capital to invest significantly less, not far more.

Guidance for students. Unless you have very good connections in the organization world, I would advise staying out of finance …