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...

We investigate the relation between the number of informed traders in a financial asset and the estimated adverse selection cost of trading in that asset, lambda, after controlling for the effects of previously identified determinants of market liquidity. As a proxy for informed traders, we use...

We study competitive, but strategic, brokers executing trades for an informed trader in a multi-period setting. The brokers can choose to (a) execute the order, as agents, first, and trade for themselves, as dealers, afterwards; or (b) trade for themselves first and execute the order later. We...

We examine the determinants of the realized bid-ask spread in the U.S. corporate, municipal and government bond markets for the years 1995 to 1997, based on newly available transactions data. Overall, we find that liquidity is an important determinant of the realized bid-ask spread in all three...

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...

We investigate the cross-country key factors of profit reinvestment decisions, using data compiled by the World Bank from over 7,000 businesses in 36 countries. We find that, compared to the security of property rights, it is a firm’s access to external financing that plays a significant role...

We use primary data compiled from the field in 34 randomly selected villages in Bangladesh to examine the role of bank-borrower relationships in the application and approval stages of microcredit. We find evidence that potential borrowers who have maintained membership for a long time, and who...