Modern financial markets offer the real world's best approximation to the idealized price auction market envisioned in economic theory. Nevertheless, as the increasingly exquisite and detailed financial data demonstrate, financial markets often fail to behave as they should if trading were truly...

This study documents economically meaningful and persistent financial advisor fixed effects in target firms' abnormal stock returns shortly prior to takeover announcements. Additional difference-in-differences analyses suggest that advisors are associated with lower pre-bid stock returns after...