We study the effects that the ban on short sales of shares in financial firms introduced in late 2008 and removed early 2009 had on the microstructure and the quality of UK equity markets. We show that the ban did nothing to affect order flows: financial stocks were being more aggressively sold...

Higher moments of long-horizon returns are important for asset pricing but are hard to measure accurately using standard techniques. We provide theory showing that short-horizon (e.g. daily) returns can be used to construct precise estimates of long-horizon (e.g. annual) moments without making...

This paper studies the intraday relationship between ultra-fast machine-driven activity (UFA) and market quality in automated equity markets. We find that higher UFA is associated with lower intraday market quality (greater quoted and effective spreads and lower depth). This effect is...