We document significant intra-year seasonality in outliers of S&P500 daily rates of return. Controlling for outliers in dummy regressions reveals that both the January and Monday effects turn from insignificant to highly significant. Mean daily return on January doubles and becomes significantly...

This paper examines herding, heterogeneity, and momentum trading of institutional investors in Israel across a broad variety of financial assets. While previous studies typically focus on stocks only, we examine herding patterns, heterogeneity, and momentum trading of institutional investors in...

This paper examines the incentive of a bank's owners and manager to increase the level of assets risk if bank deposits are insured. The model consists of three players: a public insurer (e.g., the FDIC), the bank's owners (owners), and its manager (manager). Empirical evidence has shown that the...

This paper suggests a methodology for identifying speculators in FX (foreign exchange) markets. A player is identified as a speculator only if his speculative characteristics are extreme compared with those of other players and his influence on exchange rates on outlying days is significant....

The study examines how 166 U.S. banks compensated their top management teams (top 4-5 executives in each bank) during 1993-1996. We observe two tiers of compensation in the executive suite: CEO and the rest. CEOs are paid more, especially in performance contingent compensation. The weight of...

AbstractThe foreign currency market in a small open economy, like Israel, plays a major role in fiscal and monetary policy decisions, through its effects on the financial markets and the real economy. This has become even more evident in the recent financial crisis. In this paper we explore the...