The use of corporate websites as communication medium may contribute to good governance and specifically transparency as one of the basic principles of governance, mitigating the effect of the agency problem. The primary objective of this study was to ascertain the link between voluntary corporate website disclosure and information asymmetry for the smallest JSE-listed companies. Rule 26, as issued by the LSE for its AIM-listed companies, was used as proxy for disclosure while the bid-ask spread stood as a proxy for information asymmetry. The results of a content analysis showed that the majority of smaller listed JSE companies are not on par with their UK counterparts. Using agency theory, it was argued that if information voluntarily disclosed by companies on their corporate websites is useful to investors, it should theoretically decrease information asymmetry. Although empirical evidence of a negative relationship between disclosure and the bid-ask spread was found, the relationship changed to not significant once controlled for market capitalisation. Besides the bid-ask spread, the association between disclosure and both share price volatility and share turnover (both as alternative proxies for information asymmetry) was tested, and both were found non-significantly related to disclosure. The results reported do suggest that the Rule 26 minimum corporate website disclosures may not be sufficient in persuading investors to change their trading behaviour. Although there has been no research on the voluntary compliance and effect of Rule 26 website disclosure on information asymmetry using JSE small-cap data, a major limitation of this study is that generalisation of results is limited to small listed companies.

中文翻译：

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公司网站的最低披露水平和信息不对称性：约翰内斯堡证券交易所小型公司的证据

使用公司网站作为沟通媒介可能有助于良好的治理，尤其是透明度，这是治理的基本原则之一，从而减轻了代理问题的影响。这项研究的主要目的是确定最小的JSE上市公司的自愿性公司网站披露与信息不对称之间的联系。伦敦证券交易所为其在AIM上市的公司发布的第26条规则被用作披露的代理，而买卖价差则被视为信息不对称的代理。内容分析的结果表明，大多数小型JSE上市公司与英国同类公司均不相称。使用代理理论，有人认为，如果公司在其公司网站上自愿披露的信息对投资者有用，从理论上讲，它应该减少信息不对称性。尽管找到了披露与买卖价差之间负相关关系的经验证据，但一旦控制了市值，这种关系就变得不重要了。除买卖差价外，还测试了披露与股价波动率和股票周转率之间的关联（均用作信息不对称的替代代理），并且发现两者均与披露无显着关系。报告的结果确实表明，规则26的公司网站最低披露要求不足以说服投资者改变其交易行为。尽管尚无关于使用JSE小写数据自愿遵守和遵守规则26网站披露对信息不对称的影响的研究，