An examination of the behavior of stock returns around quarterly earnings announcement dates finds a seasonal pattern: small firms show large positive abnormal returns and a sizable increase in the variability of returns around these dates. Only part of the large abnormal returns can be...

A Securities and Exchange Commission ruling, which went into effect on May 1, 1975, prohibited securities exchanges from fixing brokerage commission rates. This ruling forced the brokerage industry to move to competitive pricing. Our study analyzes the pricing mechanism that evolved following...

We develop a method of measuring ex-ante real interest rate using prices of index and nominal bonds. Employing this method and newly available data, we directly test the Fisher hypothesis that the real rate of interest is independent of inflation expectations. We find a negative correlation...

The paper analyzes the bank loans secured by recently incorporated small-sized firms based on a sample of Italian companies founded between 1992 and 2004. The study shows that the amount of the loan issued is influenced primarily by the size of the firm and the ability to provide collateral,...

Exclusion of borrowers from credit markets became a primary concern for regulators during the recovery from the recent recession. The paper analyzes loan-making institutions that set both interest rates and minimum credit requirements. We propose analytical measures of the degree of borrower...