The Moderating Role of Information Asymmetry in the Relationship between Stock Market Liquidity and Institutional Investors: A Case of Textile Sector in Pakistan Stock Exchange

The study focused on the moderation role of information asymmetry (IA) that plays a vital role between Stock market liquidity (SML) and Institutional investors (I.I) in textile sector of Pakistan stock exchange (PSX). Among total population of 155 companies, a sample of 150 textile companies is chosen with the help of convenient sampling technique for a period of 10 years (2009-2018). The results of Pre-moderation panel data regression analysis show that there is insignificant effect of I.I on SML while size (SZ), leverage (LEV) and growth (GR) have significant effect on SML. Further, post-moderation effect of IA, which is the uniqueness of the study, indicates a stronger significant effect of SZ, LEV and GR on SML as compare to pre-moderation regression results, which evident that IA do has a significant role between explanatory variables and SML. The results of the study are supporting the signaling theory on the base of moderation of IA that increases the significance level between I.I and SML.