This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the role of blockholders (large shareholders) in corporate governance. We start with the underlying property rights of public corporations; we discuss how blockholders are critical in addressing free-rider problems and why, like...

In this paper we survey the theoretical and empirical literatures on market liquidity. We organize both literatures around three basic questions: (a) how to measure illiquidity, (b) how illiquidity relates to underlying market imperfections and other asset characteristics, and (c) how...

We assess the ability of an information aggregation mechanism that operates in the over-the-counter market for financial derivatives to reduce valuation uncertainty among market participants. The analysis is based on a unique dataset of price estimates for S&P 500 index options that major...

This paper provides empirical evidence on the ability of consensus prices to reduce valuation uncertainty in the over-the-counter market for financial derivatives. The analysis is based on a proprietary data set of price estimates for S&P500 index options provided by major broker-dealers to a...

This paper exploits hand-collected data on illegal insider trades to provide new evidence of the ability of standard measures of illiquidity to detect informed trading. Controlling for unobserved cross-sectional and time-series variation, sampling bias, and strategic timing of insider trades, I...

We investigate the formation of market prices in a new experimental setting involving multi-period call-auction asset markets with state-dependent fundamentals. We are particularly interested in two informational aspects: (1) the role of traders who are informed about the true state and/or (2)...

We investigate the formation of market prices in a new experimental setting involving multi-period call-auction asset markets with state-dependent fundamentals. We are particularly interested in two informational aspects: (1) the role of traders who are informed about the true state and/or (2)...

In dynamic financial markets the stochastic supply of risky assets has a significant informational role. Contrary to static models, where it acts as “noise,” in dynamic markets stochastic supply contains information about risk premiums. Acquiring private dividend information helps investors...

The information content of stock prices is analysed without imposing strong restrictions on traders' preferences and the distribution of dividends. Noise in the information contained in equilibrium prices arises from endogenous asset supply, which offsets price movements due to informed trading....

Through extending a standard Grossman and Stiglitz (1980) noisy rational expectations economy by a heterogeneous signal structure with signal-specific differences in uncertainty, we show that price momentum as well as reversal are not intrinsically at odds with rational behavior. Differences in...