An important theoretical literature motivates collateral as a mechanism that mitigates adverse selection, credit rationing, and other inefficiencies that arise when borrowers hold ex ante private information. There is no clear empirical evidence regarding the central implication of this...

This study proposes an information asymmetry hypothesis to examine why bank credit ratings vary among countries even when bank financial ratios remain constant. Countries are divided among those with low and high information asymmetry. The former include high-income countries, those in North...

This paper analyzes the information asymmetry between owners/managers and creditors. More specifically, the research investigates the role of both disclosure on financial key performance indicators (FKPIs) and different corporate governance mechanisms in reducing the agency costs of debt. The...

Based on a dataset including 11,636 private debt placements issued globally between 1999 and 2016, we investigate the association between borrower-lender information asymmetry and the cost of debt for issuers. We observe that information asymmetry due to being a private or unrated firm is...

When designing schemes to help SMEs survive crises, the government typically faces asymmetric information, so that it cannot target the SMEs most worth saving. We show that the government can exploit the information in the borrower loan demand to improve policy targets compared with existing...

This paper evaluates the impact of the recently passed JOBS Act on IPO outcomes. A significant number of IPO firms use provisions of this act. For firms taking advantage of the JOBS Act, we find that, relative to a matched set of peer firms, (1) IPO underpricing increases, (2) post IPO liquidity...

This paper explores the relationship between corporate governance and asymmetric information. We find that proxies for governance mechanisms that encourage the monitoring of managers and rewards managers for moderating shirking and perquisite consumption are inversely related to proxies for...

We examine the impact of information flows on financing and the relative roles of hard information, soft information, and certification of issuer quality by third parties, using novel evidence from the US securities-based crowdfunding market. While hard information about the issuer's financial...

In this paper, we examine the relation between government ownership and stock price informativeness around the world. Using a sample of privatized firms from 41 countries between 1983 and 2007, we find strong and robust evidence that state ownership is associated with lower firm-level stock...