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The second major area of the so-called risk treatment is risk financing. Risk financing includes measures to finance the costs of losses, risks, and uncertainties. Historically, risk financing has been virtually synonymous with buying insurance. However, over time alternatives to insurance have evolved – self-insurance, pools, captives, large deductible programmes, finite insurance programmes, banking arrangements, and capital market-based solutions. The concept of risk financing has expanded to include products that address a range of financial risks such as interest rate and credit risk. These products include derivatives and some new innovative securities.

Today, the rapid development of the risk financing market has created several practical problems. Notably, regulatory and legal structures have not always kept pace with change, leading to much confusion about risk financing alternatives. Many products look and function almost identically to others, and yet history and custom have dictated very different treatment by regulators, tax authorities, and others. There is growing pressure for significant legal and regulatory realignment.

For newcomers to the field, risk financing measures can be thought of as existing on a continuum, ranging from pure retention (all losses paid directly out of pocket) to pure transfer (where a third party accepts and bears the full costs of risk). An important recognition of the continuum of risk financing is that there are no products that are fully retention or transfer, but rather a varying blend of the two. Hedging of risk, for example, is arguably here a near perfect blending of a retention and a transfer of risk.

Purpose: In reality, financial decisions are made under conditions of asymmetric information that results in either favorable or adverse selection. As far as financial decisions affect growth of the firm, the latter must also be affected by either favorable or adverse selection. Therefore, the core objective of this chapter is to examine the determinants of each financial decision and the effects on growth of the firm under conditions of information asymmetry.

Design/Methodology/Approach: This chapter uses data for the non-financial firms listed in S&P 500. The data cover quarterly periods from 1989 to 2014. The statistical tests include linearity, fixed, and random effects and normality. The generalized method of moments estimation method is employed in order to examine the relative significance and contribution of each financial decision on growth of the firm, respectively. Standard and proposed proxies of information asymmetry are discussed.

Findings: The results conclude that there is a variation in the impact of financial variables on growth of the firm at high and low levels of information asymmetry especially regarding investment and financing decisions. A similar picture emerges in the cases of firm size and industry effects. In addition, corporate dividen d policy has a similar effect on firm growth across all asymmetric levels. These findings prove that information asymmetry plays a vital role in the relationship between corporate financial decisions and growth of the firm. Finally, the results contribute to the vast literature on the estimation of information asymmetry by demonstrating that the classical and standard proxies for information asymmetry are not consistent in terms of the ability to differentiate between favorable or adverse selection (which corresponds to low and high level of information asymmetry).

Originality/Value: This chapter contributes to the related literature in two ways. First, this chapter offers updated empirical evidence on the way that financing, investment, and dividends decisions are made under conditions of favorable and adverse selection. Other related studies deal with each decision separately. Second, the study offers new proxies for measuring information asymmetry in order to reach robust estimates of the effects of financial decisions on growth of the firm under conditions of agency problems.