When a financial crisis breaks out, speculators typically get the blame whereas fundamentalists are presented as the safeguard against excessive volatility. This paper proposes an asset pricing model where two types of rational traders coexist: short-term speculators and long-term...

This paper investigates the motive of option trading. We show that option trading is mostly driven by differences of opinion, a finding different from the current literature that attempts to attribute option trading to information asymmetry. Our conclusion is based on three pieces of empirical...

China launched a pilot scheme in March 2010 to lift the ban on short-selling and margin-trading for stocks on a designated list. We find that stocks experience negative returns when added to the list. After the ban is lifted, price efficiency increases while stock return volatility decreases....

This paper examines whether cultural dimensions explain the variation in corporate cash holdings around the world as well as within the United States. We establish four major findings. First, in an international setting, corporate cash holdings are negatively associated with individualism and...

In this paper, we analyze the determinants and effects of credit default swap (CDS) trading initiation in the sovereign bond market. CDS trading initiation is associated with a 30–150 basis point reduction in sovereign bond yields, with greater yield reductions accruing to higher default risk...

We employ a sample of 748 environmentally-friendly (or “green”) firms listed on U.S. stock exchanges to extend studies of the effects of socially responsible investment (SRI) on stock investment returns and the performance of initial public offerings (IPOs) and seasoned equity offerings...

We examine the dynamics and the drivers of market liquidity during the financial crisis, using a unique volume-weighted spread measure. According to the literature we find that market liquidity is impaired when stock markets decline, implying a positive relation between market and liquidity...

We examine the dynamics and the drivers of market liquidity during the financial crisis, using a unique volume-weighted spread measure. According to the literature we find that market liquidity is impaired when stock markets decline, implying a positive relation between market and liquidity...

The adaptive markets hypothesis posits that trading strategies evolve as traders adapt their behavior to changing circumstances. This paper studies the evolution of trading strategies for a hypothetical trader who chooses portfolios from foreign exchange (forex) technical rules in major and...

This paper introduces a new method for identifying the simultaneity between returns and trading flows. The proposed method enables us to identify the intraday interaction using daily data, and provides measures of the information content of trading flows, and their instantaneous response to...