The purpose of this paper is to test the relationship of CSR practice­–asymmetry information and ESG performance–asymmetry information. We conjecture that there might be a particular role where the disclosure of non-financial information is deemed useful in truncating the level of asymmetry information. Using the data from two different countries, Indonesia (Asia) and Portugal (Europe), we extracted 37 companies with time period of observation ranges from 2012 to 2016. To manifest the empirical test, we use CSR report (CSR_Rep), CSR committee (CSR_com), CSR assurance (CSR_ass) and GRI adoption as the proxies of CSR practice, while the proxies of ESG performance are represented by Environmental (ENVscr), Social (SOCscr), and Governance (GOVscr) pillar scores as obtained from Thomson Reuters ASSET4 database. Bid-ask spread is used as the surrogate indicator of asymmetry information. The empirical test reveals that only variable GRI and SOCscr show negative and significant association with bid-ask spread. Whilst, the remaining variables of CSR practice (CSR_rep, CSR_com, CSR_ass), and ESG performance (ENVscr and GOVscr) are negatively associated with asymmetry information (Spread) but statistically insignificant. Our results suggest that CSR practice and ESG performance are weakly associated with asymmetry information, in which most of CSR practices and ESG performance need a time lag to allow them to be value relevant information in mitigating the level of asymmetry information.

The impressive progress of information technology has substantially impacted economic development. Given this condition, the diffusion of information technology is related to the improvement of activities in the capital market, in which asymmetric information between investors can diminished to the lowest level. Thereby, we considered that information retrieval over the internet contributes to return and liquidity. We performed Google Trend (GT) as the surrogated indicator in attenuating the asymmetric information in Indonesia Stock Exchange. By utilizing 5976 observation data from 83 cross-sectional companies and 72 monthly time series ranging from January 2007 to December 2012, we noted that the information retrieval over the Internet has negative (p < 0.05) contribution to return (RET). On the other hand, we confirmed that the information retrieval over the internet (GT) is positively (p < 0.01) related to liquidity which is surrogated by trading volume (TV).

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This study aims to investigate the effect of: (1) Return on Asset (ROA), Debt to Equity Ratio (DER), Net Profit Margin (NPM), and the proportion of women in board of directors on income smoothing. (2) Further, this study also investigates the moderating effect of proportion of women in board of directors on effect of ROA, DER, and NPM to income smoothing. Data were collected from anufacture companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) in the year of 2013 -2015. Multiple regression analysis and moderated regression analysis were used to test the hypotesis in this study. The results of multiple regression analysis show that Return on Asset (ROA) and Debt to Equity Ratio (DER) influence the income smoothing. Meanwhile, Net Profit Margin (NPM) does not influence the income smoothing. The result of moderated regression analysis shows that the proportion of women does not moderate the effect of Return on Asset (ROA), Debt to Equity Ratio (DER), and Net Profit Margin (NPM) on income smoothing. Those could happen because very women are sit in the Board of Directors of the firms in Indonesia.Keywords: Income Smoothing, Return on Asset (ROA), Debt to Equity Ratio (DER), Net profit Margin (NPM).