Using a new daily dataset for all stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange, we study the impact of information asymmetry during the liquidity freeze and market run of October 1907 - one of the most severe financial crises of the 20th century. We estimate that the run on the market increased...

Using a new daily dataset for all stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange from 1905 to 1910, we provide the first in-depth, microstructure analysis of the Panic of 1907 - one of the most severe financial crises of the 20th century - and quantify the critical role of asymmetric information...

Despite reputedly widespread market manipulation and insider trading, we find surprisingly high liquidity and low transactions costs for actively traded securities on the NYSE between 1890 and 1910, decades before SEC regulation. Moreover, market makers behave largely as predicted in theory:...

Based on daily prices (amtliche Kurse) we estimate effective spreads of securities traded at the Berlin Stock Exchange in 1880, 1890, 1900 and 1910. Several extensions of the Roll measure are applied. We find surprisingly tight effective spreads for the historical data, comparable with similar...

Based on daily prices (amtliche Kurse) we estimate effective spreads of securities traded at the Berlin Stock Exchange in 1880, 1890, 1900 and 1910. Several extensions of the Roll measure are applied. We find surprisingly tight effective spreads for the historical data, comparable with similar...

In this paper we experimentally test skewness preferences at the individual level. Several prospects that can be ordered with respect to the third-degree stochastic dominance (3SD) criterion are ranked by the participants of the experiment. We find that the skewness of a distribution has a...

Information asymmetries and conflicts of interest are theorized to inflate the cost of external finance, but formal bank relationships are thought to ameliorate such problems and may even lead to excessive leverage. Bank oversight is associated with slightly higher leverage but not with greater...

Underpricing of new issues relates negatively to underwriter reputation in studies covering the US during the early 1970s until 1997 but positively in one study of IPOs from 1992-4. This paper investigates whether IPO underpricing depends on the organization of the financial system, whether...