There is a paucity of research on discouraged small businesses, their reinvestment decisions, and the role of firm size and relationships on credit availability for small businesses internationally. The three essays included in this dissertation investigate these issues with a unique firm-level...

Prior studies have reported a positive correlation between insider trading and stock price changes. The implication of these studies is that insider (i.e., informed) trades have a differential impact on price discovery than non-insider (i.e., uninformed) trades. Based on these results, various...

Using an audit trail transaction data set compiled by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), we seek to ascertain directly the motives behind dual traders’ own account trading and whether or not they are informed traders. We estimate our system of equations on each of the 101 most...

We address two important themes associated with institutions’ trading in foreign markets: (1) the choice of trading venues (between a company’s listing in its home market and that in the U.S. as an ADR); and (2) the comparison of trading costs across the two venues. To do so, we identify...

Using high-frequency data and a carefully constructed 1-1 matched sample of control (non-decimal) stocks, we isolate the effects of decimalization for a sample of NYSE-listed common stocks trading in decimals. We find that both quoted and effective bid-ask spreads and depths have declined...

A frequently occurring, yet unexplored, phenomenon of the New York Stock Exchange specialist system is that of reassignments of stocks by specialist firms on the floor of the Exchange. These events change the portfolios at the individual specialist level by reassigning one or more stocks from...

Hedgers and a risk-neutral informed trader choose between a broker who takes a position in the asset (a capital broker) and a broker who does not (a discount broker). The capital broker exploits order flow information to mimic informed trades and offset hedgers' trades, reducing informed profits...

Prior studies have reported a positive correlation between insider trading and stock price changes implying that insider (i.e., informed) trades affect price discovery differently than non-insider (i.e., uninformed) trades. Based on these results, various scholars have argued for the...