Testing Asymmetric-Information Asset Pricing Models

We provide evidence for the importance of information asymmetry in asset pricing by using three natural experiments. Consistent with rational expectations models with multiple assets and multiple signals, we find that prices and uninformed demand fall as asymmetry increases. These falls are larger when more investors are uninformed, turnover is larger and more variable, payoffs are more uncertain, and the lost signal is more precise. Prices fall partly because expected returns become more sensitive to liquidity risk. Our results confirm that information asymmetry is priced and imply that a primary channel that links asymmetry to prices is liquidity. The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com., Oxford University Press.