Many financial markets have recently become subject to new regulations requiring transparency. This paper studies how mandatory transparency affects trading in the corporate bond market. In July 2002, TRACE began requiring the public dissemination of post-trade price and volume information for...

This paper describes the market for borrowing corporate bonds using a comprehensive dataset from a major lender. The cost of borrowing corporate bonds is comparable to the cost of borrowing stock, between 10 and 20 basis points per year. Factors that increase borrowing costs are loan size,...

This paper demonstrates that short sales are often misclassified as buyer-initiated by the Lee-Ready and other commonly used trade classification algorithms. This result is due in part to regulations which require short sales be executed on an uptick or zero-uptick. In addition, while the...

Using a longer time period and both NYSE-Amex and Nasdaq stocks, this paper examines short interest and stock returns in more detail than any previous study and finds that many documented patterns are not robust. While equally weighted high short interest portfolios generally underperform, value...

This paper investigates the market reaction to the information released in security analyst reports. It shows that the market reacts significantly and positively to changes in recommendation levels, earnings forecasts, and price targets. While changes in price targets and earnings forecasts both...

This paper examines the events following the onset of financial distress for 102 public junk bond issuers. We find that out-of-court debt relief mainly comes from junk bond - holders; banks almost never forgive principal, though they do defer payments and waive debt covenants. Asset sales are an...

Army cadets obtain occupations through a centralized process. Three objectives - increasing retention, aligning talent, and enhancing trust - have guided reforms to this process since 2006. West Point's mechanism for the Class of 2020 exacerbated challenges implementing Army policy aims. We...

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought renewed attention to rationing guidelines for scarce medical resources. This paper describes the benefits of using a reserve system over a priority system in operationalizing compromises between certain ethical goals. In the last two years, more than a dozen...

Countries and cities around the world increasingly rely on centralized systems to assign students to schools. Two algorithms, deferred acceptance (DA) and immediate acceptance (IA), are widespread. The latter is often criticized for harming disadvantaged families who fail to get access to...

Charter schools are publicly funded but operate outside the regulatory framework and collective bargaining agreements characteristic of traditional public schools. In return for this freedom, charter schools are subject to heightened accountability. This paper estimates the impact of charter...