Contour plowing. Contour ploughing or contour farming is the farming practice of ploughing and/or planting across a slope following its elevation contour lines. These contour lines create a water break which reduces the formation of rills and gullies during times of heavy water run-off; which is a major cause of top soil loss and soil erosion.
The ex-ante cost of equity capital is the core fac-tor in financial decision making such as equity valuation or project evaluation. As the ex-ante cost of equity capital is not observable, the ex-post realized stock return has been utilized as an indirect measure of the ex-ante cost of equity capital.However, the realized stock return has been proven as a noisy proxy for the ex-ante cost of eq-uity (Fama and French, 1997; Elton, 1999).sia-Pacific Journal of Financial Studies (2008) v37 n4 G  which suggests that the ICOE may reduce the noises in the ex-post stock returns as a proxy for the ex-ante cost of equity capital. Table 2 also reports the correlations among risk proxies.
Abstract. This study examines the relation between information asymmetry and the cost of equity capital of firms listed on the Australian Securities Exchange. We calculate the ex ante cost of equity capital for constituent companies of the S&P/ASX 200 Index.The bidâask spread of the companies is decomposed to find the adverse selection component, which is used to measure the information asymmetry of the company.e also find evidence that the dispersion of analysts' forecasts increases ex ante cost of capital, while analyst coverage tends to have a negative relation to expected return. This is consistent with the expectation that cost of capital increases with information uncertainty and asymmetry.