I use the global crisis of 1914 as a window onto the phenomenon of investor reaction to complex news — such as sudden political upheaval. Based on a novel database of all stocks traded on the NYSE during 1914, along with “real-time” news accounts from major newspapers, I show that NYSE...

This paper examines the relationship between the stock crash risk of REITs and different types of institutional investors. First, when we classify REIT institutional investors by their legal type, we find that the ownership of pension funds (bank trusts) is negatively (positively) related to...

We study investor overreaction using data for five major stock market crashes during the 1987-2008 period. We find some evidence of investor overreaction in all five stock market crashes. The prices of stocks investors bid down more than the average during crashes tend to increase more than the...

In a sample of U.S. stocks, higher stock lending fees predict significantly lower excess returns beyond shorting demand and loan supply. This relation is stronger after October 2008 which is likely attributable to a regime shift in the lending market with the onset of the Global Financial...

Does trader leverage drive equity market liquidity? We use the unique features of the margin trading system in India to identify a causal relationship between traders' ability to borrow and a stock's market liquidity. To quantify the impact of trader leverage, we employ a regression...

We use the introduction of a fi nancial transaction tax (FTT) in France in 2012 to test competing theories on its impact. We find no support for the idea that an FTT improves market quality by a ffecting the composition of trading volume. Instead, our results are in line with the hypothesis that...

This paper argues that bank runs on the shadow banking system was a significant factor in the spread of subprime losses to the overall financial system. Highly leveraged shadow banks with illiquid assets suffered from the loss spiral effect whereby they were forced to deleverage due to higher...

We show that limited dealer participation in the market, coupled with an informational friction resulting from high frequency trading, can induce demand for liquidity to be upward sloping and strategic complementarities in traders' liquidity consumption decisions: traders demand more liquidity...

We show that limited dealer participation in the market, coupled with an informational friction resulting from high frequency trading, can induce demand for liquidity to be upward sloping and strategic complementarities in traders' liquidity consumption decisions traders demand more liquidity...

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers Inc. announced their filing for bankruptcy. This announcement did take markets by surprise causing widespread panic and disruptions in financial systems worldwide. It has been widely argued that financial contagion has escalated the insolvency into a...