Recent events in several countries have underscored the importance of good governance in private occupational pension plans. The present paper uses contract theory to analyze the interplay of residual claims and control rights in private pensions. The residual claimant is the plan sponsor in a...

Central bank independence is widely thought be a sine qua non of a credible commitment to price stability. The surprise decision by the UK government to grant operational independence to the Bank of England in 1997 affords us a natural experiment with which to gauge the impact on the yield curve...

This paper presents and implements a number of tests for non-linear dependence and a test for chaos using transactions prices on three LIFFE futures contracts: the Short Sterling interest rate contract, the Long Gilt government bond contract, and the FTSE 100 stock index futures contract. While...

How does the trading behaviour of institutional money managers affect stock prices? In this paper we document a robust relationship between the net trade patterns of institutional money managers and long term equity returns. Examining quarterly data on US institutional holdings from 1983 to...

There is now extensive empirical evidence showing that fund managers have relative performance objectives and adapt their investment strategy in the last part of the calendar year to balance their performance in the early part of the year. Emphasis was, however, put on returns in excess of some...

There is now extensive empirical evidence showing that fund managers have relative performance objectives and adapt their investment strategy in the last part of the calendar year to their performance in the early part of the year. However, emphasis was put on returns in excess of some exogenous...

Trading volume and order flow have both been closely associated with informed trader activity in the market microstructure literature. Using theory that explains regular intraday patterns in trading data, we transform these two variables into proxies for private information and examine their...

Relatively there is little empirical research that has been taken to understand how the underlying economy affects customers’ subsequent financial product purchase behaviours. A better understanding of this influence and being able to predict the probability of purchasing are important for...

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to undertake an examination of the impacts of socio-demographic and economic variables on the probability of purchasing financial products. There is relatively little empirical research that has been taken to understand how the underlying economy...

This article examines how microstructure effects, evident in high frequency data, influence bid–ask spreads and volatility in transaction price series. It uses the event of European Monetary Union (EMU), and the upheaval that this entailed, as an opportunity to empirically investigate these...