This paper estimates the returns to insiders when they trade their company’s stock. We first construct a rolling "purchase portfolio" that holds all shares purchased by insiders for a six-month period, and an analogous "sale portfolio" that holds all shares sold by insiders for six months. The...

The usual approach to determine if market prices of uninsured bank liabilities reflect the risk of default is to regress the yield spread of bank debt against accounting measures of bank risk. To date these results have been mixed. Here we argue that this is because previous investigations lack...

The usual approach to determine if market prices of uninsured bank liabilities reflect the risk of default is to regress the yield spread of bank debt against accounting measures of bank risk. To date these results have been mixed. Here we argue that this is because previous investigations lack...

The dynamic behavior of security prices is studied in a setting where two agents trade strategically and learn from market prices. Each trader receives a private signal about fundamentals, the significance of which depends on the signal received by the other trader. In trading, each agent wants...

In the last two decades U.S. banks have become systematically less profitable and riskier as nonbank competition has eroded the profitability of banks’ traditional activities. Bank failures, insignificant from 1934, the date the Glass-Steagall Act was passed, until 1980, rose exponentially in...