We use a laboratory market to investigate how the ability to hide orders affects traders' strategies and market outcomes. We examine three market structures: Visible markets in which all orders must be displayed, Iceberg markets in which a minimum size must be displayed, and Hidden markets in...

This paper uses a Pragmatic theory of language (drawn from philosophy and linguistics) to diagnose the causes of excessive and inefficient financial disclosure and propose a regulatory solution. The diagnosis is that existing regulations are effective at encouraging firms to adhere to some, but...

This paper proposes an accounting for revenues as an alternative to the proposals currently begin aired by the FASB and IASB. Existing revenue recognition rules are vague, resulting in messy application, so the Boards are seeking a remedy. However, their proposals replace the traditional...

We use a laboratory market to investigate how the ability to hide orders affects traders' strategies and market outcomes in a limit order book environment. We find that order strategies are greatly affected by allowing hidden liquidity, with traders substituting non-displayed for displayed...

SLCapex is a stock exchange owned and operated by “residents” of the online virtual world Second Life. Despite its almost complete lack of regulation and legal protections against fraud or insider trading, issuers were able to raise approximately US$145,000 from investors, which grew to...

We present 60 experienced credit analysts with financial information for two firms: one that mainly outsources production and one that does not. We find that analysts are better able to identify firm characteristics that make an outsourcer more creditworthy when those characteristics are...

The stated goals of the SEC are to protect investors, maintain orderly markets and facilitate capital formation. These goals can be achieved with very light regulation if, as assumed by traditional economic theory, investors process information costlessly and protect themselves from...

We report the results of three experiments based on the model of Hong and Stein (1999). Consistent with the model, results show that when informed traders do not observe prices, uninformed traders generate long-term price reversals by engaging in momentum trade. However, when informed traders...

We use a laboratory market to investigate the behavior of noise traders and their impact on the market. Our experiment features informed traders (who possess fundamental information), liquidity traders (who have to trade for exogenous reasons), and noise traders (who do not possess fundamental...

Behavioral finance began as an attempt to understand why financial markets react inefficiently to public information. One stream of behavioral finance examines how psychological forces induce traders and managers to make suboptimal decisions, and how these decisions affect market behavior....