This paper analyzes the debt-equity choice for financing a two-stage investment when a firm's insiders have private information about the firm's expected earnings. When private information is one-dimensional (for example when short-term earnings are common knowledge while long-term earnings are private information) a separating equilibrium does not exist. When private information is two-dimensional a separating equilibrium may exist where firms with a higher rate of earnings growth issue debt and firms with a low rate of earnings growth issue equity. This provides new insights into the issue of different kinds of securities by different types of firms under asymmetric information as well as the link between debt-equity choice and operating performance.

In this volume, specialists from traditionally separate areas in economics and finance investigate issues at the conjunction of their fields. They argue that financial decisions of the firm can affect real economic activity—and this is true for enough firms and consumers to have significant aggregate economic effects. They demonstrate that important differences—asymmetries—in access to information between "borrowers" and "lenders" ("insiders" and "outsiders") in financial transactions affect investment decisions of firms and the organization of financial markets. The original research emphasizes the role of information problems in explaining empirically important links between internal finance and investment, as well as their role in accounting for observed variations in mechanisms for corporate control.

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject Economics - Finance, , course: MBA and Engineering, language: English, abstract: The specter of decreased economic activities, financial crisis, unbecoming ethical standards have in the recent past and fore going, characterized asymmetric information on corporate finance. The consequences normally have a ricochet effect and can be generally catastrophic to normal economic activities to mention the least. This paper considers scenario’s where information asymmetry was prevalent or may have had its effects play out. The typical investor mindset and the opportunity cost associated with the preferred capital structure of the capitalizing process were mentioned. A basis for proper appreciation of the concept – Corporate finance under asymmetric information was initiated here, with a detailed explanation of corporate finance and its components, this was succeeded by a summary of scenarios were asymmetric information were prevalent and an intelligent look was also taken at asymmetric information between insiders and investors and the concomitant lemon problem, where the effects were carefully highlighted in a progression to the level of severity - Market breakdown and costly signaling. The fact that asymmetric information has been widely recognized as bad and generally viewed in a negative light must warrant it being viewed with a high level of seriousness. It is widely known that while lot of effort have been put into stemming the tides of the consequences of asymmetric information, a lot of effort too, have been dedicated to innovation and risk assessment, to capture the interest of investors, who have been affected by the consequences of asymmetric information. These may have formed a veritable platform for a recent paper by Pierre Barbaroux (2014), that elucidated the rise of innovation and innovative entrepreneurs based on the management of asymmetric information. An attempt has in any case, been made here to suggest efforts at marginalizing the negative impacts of asymmetric information and also remedies at reducing the far reaching impacts on the lenders and the aggregate economic activity in general.

Recent Nobel Prizes to Akerlof, Spence, and Stiglitz motivate this review of basic concepts and empirical evidence on information asymmetry and the choice of debt vs. equity. We first review the literature that holds investment fixed. Then we review capital structure issues related to the adverse investment selection problem of Myers-Majluf. Finally, we discuss the timing hypothesis of capital structure. Empirical studies do not consistently support one theory of capital structure under information asymmetry over the others. Thus, the review suggests that additional theoretical contributions are needed to help understand and explain findings in the empirical literature.

In credit markets, asymmetric information problems arise when borrowers have private information about their creditworthiness that is not observable by lenders. If these informational asymmetries do not negatively affect lenders' profitability, then they are irrelevant to lenders.