This paper examines when information asymmetry among investors affects the cost of capital in excess of standard risk factors. When equity markets are perfectly competitive, information asymmetry has no separate effect on the cost of capital. When markets are imperfect, information asymmetry can...

While most accounting information is idiosyncratic in nature, economy-wide factors such as accounting standards affect the quality of idiosyncratic accounting information of many firms simultaneously. We study idiosyncratic and systematic features of accounting information by embedding a...

This paper examines the relation between information differences across investors (i.e., information asymmetry) and the cost of capital, and establishes that with perfect competition information asymmetry makes no difference. Instead, a firm's cost of capital is governed solely by the average...