We study price discovery in municipal bonds, an important OTC market. As in markets for consumer goods, prices "rise faster than they fall." Round-trip profits to dealers on retail trades increase in rising markets but do not decrease in falling markets. Further, effective half-spreads increase...

As a consequence of optimal investment choices, a firm's assets and growth options change in predictable ways. Using a dynamic model, we show that this imparts predictability to changes in a firm's systematic risk, and its expected return. Simulations show that the model simultaneously...

I model strategic interaction among issuers, underwriters, retail investors, and institutional investors when the secondary market has limited price transparency. Search costs for retail investors lead to price dispersion in the secondary market, while the price for institutional investors is...

The authors study a model where firms may possess free cash flow and takeovers may be disruptive. They show that the possibility of a takeover, combined with defensive mechanisms and the ability to pay greenmail, can solve the free cash flow problem in an efficient way. The payment of greenmail...

We present a method to estimate the gains from trade in limit-order markets and provide empirical evidence that the limit-order market is a good market design. Using observations on order submissions and execution and cancellation histories, we estimate both the distribution of traders'...

The authors characterize the conditions under which efficient portfolios put small weights on individual assets. These conditions bound mean returns with measures of average absolute covariability between assets. The bounds clarify the relationship between linear asset pricing models and...