Question

How does information asymmetry hurt investors in the capital marketplace?

Answer 1

The capital market has an important role at the micro and macro economical level, having the capacity to mobilize resources and to place them in a productive manner. The relation between accounting and capital market started to be analyzed from the middle of XXth century, when the investors started to ask more details about the companies' activity and not just general accounting values. The certainty is nowadays a part of the cost of information which is consciously assumed by the users differently in pre-crisis and crisis time. Informational asymmetry plays a double role through the participants on the capital market: positive one for those who use the lack of information of others with economic responsibility and negative when information holders use them to affect the other participants or users. Financial markets exhibit asymmetric information in that in a financial transaction, one of the two parties involved will have more information than the other and will have the ability to make a more informed decision.