We investigate the importance of ambiguity, or Knightian uncertainty, in executives' decisions about when to exercise stock options. We develop an empirical estimate of ambiguity and include it in regression models alongside the more traditional measure of risk, equity volatility. We show that...

We study trading behavior and the properties of prices in informationally complex markets. Our model is based on the single-period version of the linear-normal framework of Kyle (1985). We allow for essentially arbitrary correlations among the random variables involved in the model: the value of...

I show that frequent batch auctions for stocks have the potential to reduce the severity of stock price crashes when they occur. For a given sequence of orders from a continuous electronic limit order book market, matching orders using one second apart batch auctions results in nearly the same...

This paper develops a multi-period rational expectations model of stock trading in which investors have differential information concerning the underlying value of the stock. Investors trade competitively in the stock market based on their private information and the information revealed by the...

Technological progress is typically a result of trial-and-error research by competing firms. While some research paths lead to the innovation sought, others result in dead ends. Because firms benefit from their competitors working in the wrong direction, they do not reveal their dead-end...

People are more willing to bet on their own judgments when they feel skillful or knowledgeable (Heath and Tversky (1991)). We investigate whether this quot;competence effectquot; influences trading frequency and home bias. We find that investors who feel competent trade more often and have a...

We conjecture that a mutual fund manager with superior stock selection ability is more likely to benefit from trading in stocks affected by information-events. Taking the probability of informed trading (PIN, Easley, Kiefer, O'Hara, and Paperman, 1996) to measure the amount of informed trading...

Despite their strong positive average returns across numerous asset classes, momentum strategies can experience infrequent and persistent strings of negative returns. These momentum crashes are partly forecastable. They occur in "panic" states - following market declines and when market...

This paper studies Pareto-optimal risk-sharing arrangements in a private information economy with aggregate uncertainty and ex ante heterogeneous agents. I show how to implement Pareto-optima as equilibria when agents can trade claims to consumption contingent on aggregate shocks in financial...

We develop a structural credit risk model to examine how the interactions of liquidity and default risk affect corporate bond pricing. By explicitly modeling debt rollover and by endogenizing the holding costs via collateralized financing, our model generates rich links between liquidity risk...