This paper investigates insider trading before scheduled versus unscheduled corporate announcements to explore how corporate insiders utilize their private information when the amount of liquidity trading is varying over time in a predictable way. Using a comprehensive insider trading database...

Using the comprehensive trading data for the U.S. corporate insiders between 1993 and 2008, we document robust evidence that insiders as a whole achieve transaction prices superior to the volume-weighted average prices. This outperformance, expressed as a positive trading alpha, remains after we...