The political uncertainty surrounded by the turnover of government officials has a major impact on local economies and local firms. This paper investigates the relationship between the turnover of prefecture-city officials and the inherent risk faced by local firms in China. Using data from 1999...

In contrast to most other countries, Chinese foreign class B shares trade at an average discount of about 60 percent to the prices at which domestic A shares trade. We argue that one reason for the large price discount of B shares is because foreign investors have less information on Chinese...

Essay 1 extends the existing theoretical framework to incorporate a bank's charter value and analyze directly its effect on the pricing of deposit insurance. It derives values of deposit insurance with both deterministic and stochastic charter values. It is shown that significant charter value...

We investigate the relation between the number of informed traders in a financial asset and the estimated adverse selection cost of trading in that asset, lambda, after controlling for the effects of previously identified determinants of market liquidity. As a proxy for informed traders, we use...

In contrast to most other countries, Chinese foreign class B shares trade at an average discount of about 60 percent to the prices at which domestic A shares trade. We argue that one reason for the large price discount of B shares is because foreign investors have less information on Chinese...

Dual trading is the practice whereby futures floor traders execute trades both for their own and customers' accounts on the same day. We provide evidence, in the context of restrictions on dual trading, that aggregate liquidity measures, such as the average bid-ask spread, may be misleading...

We investigate, both theoretically and empirically, the relation between the adverse selection and fixed costs of trading and the number of informed traders in a financial asset. As a proxy for informed traders, we use dual traders -- i.e., futures floor traders who execute trades both for their...

We study the effect of restrictions on dual trading in futures contracts. Previous studies have found that dual trading restrictions can have a positive, negative, or neutral effect on market liquidity. In this paper, we propose that trader heterogeneity may explain these conflicting results. We...

This paper finds that marketmaking practices of dual traders are pit-specific. In the S&P 500 futures pit, the authors estimate that, because of a lower price impact, customers of dual traders pay eighteen cents less per contract on their trades, compared with customers of pure brokers....