The Integration of Financial Markets and the Effectiveness of Listing Standards

Abstract

The increasing international integration of financial creates challenges to local financial markets and authorities. In this context, I develop a model to understand the effectiveness of listing standards in two critical aspects: the ability to reduce, or even, to eliminate information asymmetries between the firms and investors, and the ability to hold to the firms listing in their market. In this model, an economy is populated by two kinds of entrepreneurs and there is information asymmetry with respect to their type. This information asymmetry can generate adverse selection if investors are not able to distinguish between high and low quality firms. The Entrepreneurs can only issue securities if they pass a screening process which analyses the information they provide to investors. I find that the precision of this screening process determines the type of information entrepreneurs reveal and the model determines a set of listing standards for which Entrepreneurs reveal the true quality of their project. I analyze how increasing financial market integration affects the effectiveness of this screening test and how the existence of different markets setting screening tests with different precision levels affects the decision of where to issue securities. I show that increased financial market integration erodes the effectiveness of the listing standards.