The Information Content of Interest Rate Spreads Across Financial Systems

This paper examines whether information asymmetries and agency costs vary across OECD countries depending on the nature of their financial system. It does this by examining whether the predictive power of the spread between yields on private and government securities (which, it has been argued, reflects such factors) varies across countries. The results indicate that the information content of the spread is highest in those countries with market-based financial systems ...