Using a simple empirical strategy, we decode the information in insider trades. Exploiting the fact that insiders trade for a variety of reasons, we show that there is predictable, identifiable "routine" insider trading that is not informative for the future of firms. Stripping away these...

We extend Kyle's (1985) model of insider trading to the case where liquidity provided by noise traders follows a general stochastic process. Even though the level of noise trading volatility is observable, in equilibrium, measured price impact is stochastic. If noise trading volatility is...

This paper studies how private information is incorporated into prices, using a unique setting from the 18th century that, in many dimensions, is simpler and closer to stylized models of price discovery than modern-day markets. Specifically, the paper looks at a number of English securities that...

Does information asymmetry affect the cross-section of expected stock returns? We explore this question using representative portfolio holdings data from the Shanghai Stock Exchange. We show that institutional investors have a strong information advantage, and that past aggressiveness of...

We analyze a model of informed trading where an activist shareholder accumulates shares in an anonymous market and then expends costly effort to increase the firm value. We find that equilibrium prices are affected by the position accumulated by the activist, because the level of effort...

This paper estimates the profits to insiders when they trade their company's stock. We construct a rolling purchase portfolio' that holds all shares purchased by insiders over the previous year and an analogous sale portfolio' that holds all shares sold by insiders over the previous year. We...

We study the relation between corporate governance and opportunistic timing of CEO option grants via backdating or otherwise. Our methodology focuses on how grant date prices rank within the price distribution of the grant month. During 1996-2005, about 12% of firms provided one or more lucky...

This paper exploits hand-collected data on illegal insider trades to test whether standard illiquidity measures can detect informed trading. Controlling for unobserved cross-sectional and time-series variation, sampling bias, and strategic timing of insider trades, I find that only absolute...

This paper studies certain effects of insider trading on the principal-agent problem in corporations. Specifically, we focus on insiders' choice among investment projects. Other things equal, insider trading leads insiders to choose riskier investment projects, because increased volatility of...

While prior empirical work and much public attention have focused on the opportunistic timing of executives' grants, we provide in this paper evidence that outside directors' option grants have also been favorably timed to an extent that cannot be fully explained by sheer luck. Examining events...