In this paper, we employ a registry of legal insider trading for Dutch listed firms to investigate the information content of trades by corporate insiders. Using a standard event-study methodology, we examine short-term stock price behavior around trades. We find that purchases are followed by...

The aim of this paper is to critically examine China’s regulation for securities offerings in light of the recent financial global crisis and, based on these findings, make policy recommendations for future reform. The Chinese regulatory regime contains the key element of merits review, apart...

Many commentators have argued that securitization – where investment banks pool receivables, such as mortgages, and then resell them as a collection of securities – creates investments so complex that even sophisticated investors cannot determine asset quality. Securitization’s critics...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze some leximetric data for a number of developed and less developed countries hitherto unavailable to examine (i) the changing state of shareholder protection and (ii) its connection with stock market development and capital accumulation. It finds a strong...

Information is said to be the lifeblood of financial markets. Securities markets rely on corporate disclosures, quotes, prices, and indices, as well as the market structures, products and standards that give them meaning, for the efficient allocation of capital. The availability of and access to...

From March 3 to March 5, 2010, the German Association for Law and Society and the University of Bremen hosted a Conference on "Transnationalism in Law, State and Society". Part of this conference was a panel on transnational financial markets regulation. The aim of this panel was to ask some...

Recent amendments to SEC Regulation SHO (originally adopted in 2004) have implemented hard close requirements for fails to deliver which often follow the naked short selling of stock (selling short without having borrowed the shares). Naked short selling is frequently a central plank in a...

This posting is a second iteration of this article, which first appreared in February 2009 but has been revised substantially. In April 2009, the SEC promulgated for comment a 273 page release dealing with ideas and proposals for regulation of short selling of securities. The concepts explored...

This essay first shows how the 1998 Consolidated Act on Financial Intermediation (TUIF) and subsequent reforms strengthened the role of Consob (the Italian S.E.C.). It argues that the TUIF greatly enhanced Consob's powers and role in the Italian securities market. Later reforms went in the same...

In light of the twentieth anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Shearson v. McMahon enforcing a pre-dispute arbitration clause in a brokerage customer's account agreement, the author revisits the assumptions of the McMahon Court supporting its conclusion that arbitration is fair to...