Corporate Structure and Asymmetric Information

The presence of asymmetry of information on the securities market may lead to an unreasonable increase in the trading volume of some securities and a decrease in the trading volume of others. It can appear in insider trading or in conspiracy of board members regarding the development strategy of the company. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of information asymmetry on public companies with various types of corporate structure in Russia. First of all, I will focus on financial and economic factors influencing the level of asymmetric information. To assess the asymmetry of information Moscow Exchange trading data will be used. An unbalanced panel was obtained, consisting of data on 399 Russian firms trading in the period from 2013 to 2020. The dependent variables are the Tobin’s Q, effective bid-ask spread and the probability of informed trading (PIN). Various financial indicators, liquidity and profitability ratios act as independent variables. The control variables are dummy variables containing information about the organizational structure of the company. The obtained empirical data partially confirm some stated hypotheses and confirm the conclusions of other authors who have studied this scientific field. This work can be used in analyzing the securities market for insider trading, which is reflected in changes of bid-ask spread.