XBRL, The Quality Of Accounting Information And The Cost Of Debt Capital

The limitations of the traditional PDF format financial statements in terms of data sharing and timeliness have promoted the development of financial reports based on the XBRL(eXtensible Business Reporting Language).The greatest advantage of XBRL based financial reporting is that its tagged data processing can more accurately and timely communicate information about the company's operations to information users and improve the quality of accounting information.The financial report is considered to be the "container" that carries the accounting information and is the final product of the entire accounting workflow.Under normal circumstances,external information users obtain their own required information through the company's published financial reports and make relevant decisions accordingly.From this,we can know that the quality of accounting information of enterprises can have a direct impact on the decision-making behavior of information users.When information users obtain high-quality accounting information,they can have a positive effect on making correct decision-making.On the contrary,if the quality of the accounting information obtained by the users is low,it may have a negative impact on the decision-making behavior.The implementation of XBRL technology is not only conducive to improving the quality of accounting information,but also can provide investors with sufficient information to reduce investors' uncertainty risk,which is beneficial for enterprises to obtain debt capital with lower borrowing interest rates.Therefore,based on the current development of XBRL in China,it is of great significance to study the relationship between XBRL,accounting information quality and debt capital cost.This paper mainly studies the relationship between XBRL,the quality of accounting information and the cost of debt capital.First,the article reviews the domestic and foreign scholars' research on the quality of XBRL and accounting information,the quality of accounting information and the cost of debt capital as well as the cost of XBRL and capital.Then,based on the theoretical basis,the paper analyzes the relationship among the three,puts forward three theoretical hypotheses,and further builds related models.Finally,the paper takes the data from 2005-2007 and 2009-2011 of listed companies in China's two major exchanges as samples to empirically test the quality of corporate accounting information and debt capital costs since the implementation of XBRL technology.The following conclusions are drawn: First,there is a significant positive correlation between XBRL and the quality of accounting information.After the implementation of XBRL,the quality of corporate accounting information has been improved.Second,there is a positive correlation between the quality of accounting information and the cost of debt capital,indicating that the improvement of the quality of accounting information can effectively reduce the cost of debt capital.Third,the results of examining the relationship among XBRL,accounting information quality and debt capital cost show that the implementation of XBRL can improve the quality of accounting information and achieve the purpose of reducing the cost of debt capital.Finally,according to the above conclusions and the shortcomings of China's current promotion of XBRL technology,the corresponding recommendations are proposed,including the process of promoting the development of a unified XBRL general classification standard;expanding the application scope of XBRL;advancing the auditing process of financial reporting in XBRL format;cultivating XBRL Professionals;set up a dedicated XBRL agency.