Title: The effect of sustainability assurance demand on information asymmetry: evidence from French companies

Authors: Yosra Mnif Sellami; Nada Damak Ben Hlima

Addresses: GFC (Gouvernance, Finance et Comptabilité), Faculty of Economics and Management, Department Accounting, Taxation and Law in High Institute of Business Administration of Sfax, University of Sfax, Tunisia, Road to the airport km 4, BP 1013, 3018, Tunisia ' LARTIGE, Faculty of Economics and Management, University of Sfax-Tunisia, Road to the airport km 4, BP 1013, 3018, Tunisia

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to examine whether voluntary demand for sustainability reporting assurance by French companies is associated with lower information asymmetry. The use of the generalised least squares method (GLS) for a sample of 768 firm-year observations of French companies belonging to the SBF 250 and CAC All-Tradable indices during the period 2010-2012, highlights how voluntary sustainability assurance demand reduces the problems of asymmetric information between the different market agents. To our knowledge, this study is the first that has examined the impact of sustainability assurance on the information asymmetry in code-law countries, with low investor protection rights, such as France. Moreover, this research examines the effect of sustainability reporting assurance on information asymmetry measured by bid-ask spread. In addition, this study makes a link between two important areas of sustainability assurance and finance.

Keywords: sustainability assurance; information asymmetry; bid-ask spreads; France.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMEF.2019.098637

International Journal of Monetary Economics and Finance, 2019 Vol.12 No.1, pp.25 - 38

Received: 25 Oct 2016
Accepted: 21 Sep 2017
Published online: 29 Mar 2019 *

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