In the past twenty-five years, derivatives markets have grown exponentially. Large, modern derivatives markets increasingly enable investors to hold economic interests in corporations without owning voting rights, and vice versa. This leads to both empty voters — investors whose voting rights...

On 19th March 2009, several national newspapers in Austria reported on a “turbo scandal” that had been suspected on the Vienna Stock Exchange for several years. Concerned investors argued that the issuers of turbo certificates tried to raid the underlying prices of these down-and-out call...

We study the relation between the centralization of regulated financial information, information asymmetry, and capital market liquidity. Specifically, we exploit the staggered implementation of digital storage and access facilities (called Officially Appointed Mechanisms, or OAMs) for regulated...

This statement presents my views on buybacks and my general reactions to provisions in four pieces of legislation relating to stock buybacks. Part I describes the role of stock buybacks in the economy and offers some “investor-benign” explanations for firms' use of repurchases rather than...

This paper reviews recent research on the causes and consequence of different forms of financial market misconduct and potential agency conflicts and the impact of regulating financial market misconduct. We examine regulatory responses to financial market misconduct and highlight the presence of...

The present article contains a brief but comprehensive overview of the development of the Capital Markets Union (CMU) project in the EU to further deepen EU capital markets’ integration. After the Introduction, it first discusses the Commission’s 2015 CMU Action Plan and its follow-up,...

We study a model where some investors ("hedgers") are bad at information processing, while others ("speculators") have superior information-processing ability and trade purely to exploit it. The disclosure of financial information induces a trade externality: if speculators refrain from trading,...

At a time of such great turbulence, looking to the future directions of capital markets and their regulation in developed economies is a particularly risky business. We are in the midst of a great sea change.Nevertheless, there are several current, and readily observable, phenomena which are...

Recent concern over "high frequency trading" (HFT) has called into question the fairness of the practice. What does it mean for a financial market to be "fair"? We first examine how high frequency trading is actually used. High frequency traders are often implementing traditional beneficial...