No abstract

We examine the role of information asymmetry in the debt-equity choice decisions of firms from an important emerging market, India. Information problems are more severe in the emerging markets and we find strong evidence in favour of information asymmetry playing a key role in the capital structure decisions of Indian firms. Consistent with the pecking order model, we find that equity issues are lesser in number and firms facing fewer information problems issue equity. We use novel variables such as analyst coverage, analyst forecast surprise and dispersion to capture information asymmetry in the Indian market.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of information asymmetry in the equity issue decision of two categories of Indian firms with distinct levels of information asymmetry – levered firms and unlevered firms. Design/methodology/approach This paper proposes a novel empirical approach to compare these two categories of firms. Levered firms exposed to the debt markets are under the scrutiny of lenders, reducing their information asymmetry problems. On the other hand, unlevered firms, which are smaller firms with fewer tangible assets and no credit history suffers more information problems. The authors use a propensity score matching method to identify firms that share similar firm-specific characteristics in these groups and compare equity issues to analyze the impact of information asymmetry. Findings The results show that information asymmetry plays a key role in the equity issue decision of Indian firms. Additionally, the authors find that the trends and characteristics of low-leverage (LL) firms in India are comparable to the LL from developed economies, which is consistent with the findings that they face more information problems. Originality/value Unlike the conventional approach of using proxy variables to capture information asymmetry, this study uses a novel framework where the authors compare the equity issue decision of similar firms in two categories with different degrees of information asymmetry.

PurposeThe objective of this paper is to investigate the role of information asymmetry in the equity selling mechanisms chosen by the firms from an important emerging market, India. Specifically, the authors look into the choice between the two most popular mechanisms of equity issues – rights issue and private placement of equity.Design/methodology/approachThis study introduces three analyst specific variables as proxies of information asymmetry as the conventional proxies are fraught with several disadvantages. First, the paper tests the choice between rights issue and private placement using a binary logistic model. In the second approach the authors use rights issue and segregate the private placements into preferential allotments and qualified institutional placements and test the impact of information asymmetry using a multinomial logistic regression.FindingsThe outcome of this empirical exercise shows that only those firms facing lesser information problems choose rights issue of equity. Private placements are chosen by firms facing higher information problems to circumvent information costs. The results remain invariant even after segregating the qualified institutional placements from private equity placement as the firms with information disadvantage choose to place equity privately.Originality/valueIn contrast to the conventional studies that focus on the debt-equity framework, the authors argue that the impact of information asymmetry is applicable even at disaggregated levels of equity selling mechanism.