Previous empirical studies of information cascades use either naturally occurring data or laboratory experiments. We combine attractive elements from each of these lines of research by observing market professionals from the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) in a controlled environment. Analysis of...

Two behavioral concepts, loss aversion and mental accounting, have been combined to provide a theoretical explanation of the equity premium puzzle. Recent experimental evidence supports the theory, as students' behavior has been found to be consistent with myopic loss aversion (MLA). Yet, much...

We study the effects of alternative halt and reopening procedures on prices, transaction costs, and trading activity for a sample of news-related trading halts on Nasdaq. For intraday halts that reopen after only a five-minute quotation period, inside quoted spreads more than double following...

The relative merits of dealer versus auction markets have been a subject of significant and sometimes contentious debate. On January 20, 1997, the Securities and Exchange Commission began implementing reforms that would permit the public to compete directly with Nasdaq dealers by submitting...

For NYSE-listed IPOs, limit order submissions and depth relative to volume are unusually low on the first trading day. Initial buy-side liquidity is higher for IPOs with high-quality underwriters, large syndicates, low insider sales, and high premarket demand, while sell-side liquidity is higher...

In August 1999, U.S. exchanges began to compete directly for order flow in many options that had been exclusively listed on another exchange, shifting 37% of option volume to multiple-listing status by the end of September. Effective and quoted bid-ask spreads decrease significantly after...

We study the daily and intradaily cross-sectional relation between stock returns and the trading of institutional and individual investors in Nasdaq 100 securities. Based on the previous day's stock return, the top performing decile of securities is 23.9% more likely to be bought in net by...