Corporate Governance and Information Asymmetry

Abstract

The financial industry is regarded as the backbone of the economy, and good corporate governance is critical to its smooth operation. Keeping in view the importance of corporate governance, this study aims to empirically investigate the impact of corporate governance on information asymmetry with moderating role of institutional quality of Islamic and conventional financial institutions. We used unbalanced panel data from 2006 to 2017 of 49 financial institutions including commercial banks, insurance companies, and Modaraba companies. A two-step system-Generalize Method of Moments (GMM) estimator is used to mitigate the endogeneity problem. Corporate governance of Conventional Financial Institutions (CFIs) is significantly related to information asymmetry however, the board size, and board composition of Islamic Financial Institutions (IFIs) are insignificant with asymmetric information index (AII). Further, the size of the shari’ah board is negatively and significantly related to AII. Institutional Quality (IQ) is significantly contributed toward the reduction of information asymmetry and plays a role as a moderator. Further, the impact of corporate governance on IFIs and CFIs differs due to the nature and contractual relationship of the parties and the institution’s type. The results of the study reveal that good quality institutions are important for corporate governance structure and the reduction of information asymmetry in financial institutions.