기업의 대리인문제와 정보비대칭성

The degree of information asymmetry between firm and outside investors is affected by its agency problem. Accounting information mitigates information asymmetry between firm and outside investors and it has been the logical background of financial accounting and management accounting. However, it is complicated to measure information asymmetry and impossible to observe it directly. Futhermore, we know the difficulties in analysing and generalizing the result of the empirical studies on information asymmetry. This study presents a persuasive empirical evidence using comprehensive measures of information asymmetry. This study is to examine what causes differences among Korean manufacturing companies by measuring the disclosure gap of companies to effect information asymmetry and how it affects of cost of capital, analyst forecast error, and insider's information benefit from 1997 to 2008. Disclosure gap is defined as a disparity between the disclosure numbers before 2001 and average mandatory disclosure numbers form 2001 to 2008. The degree of information asymmetry between firm and outside investors is affected by information cost and relative private benefits of firms. Therefore, it is expected firms maximize the private benefits－such as controlling shareholders(owner－manager) can pursue private benefit easily, that has a ownership not allowing outsiders monitoring closely, and that is not under corporate governance relatively － would have higher degree of information asymmetry. The empirical results revealed that when firms tend to seek the private benefit and have higher information asymmetry. The degree of the private benefits of managers according to agency problem affects disclosure gap. And, firms that tend to have higher disclosure gap got higher degree of information asymmetry such as higher cost of capital, higher analyst forecast error, and higher insider's information benefit. This study provides empirical evidences that systematically analyze the cross－sectional difference of information asymmetry among Korean manufacturing firms.