To prevent firms from manipulating prices, U.S. regulators set price ceilings for open-market share repurchases. We find that market structure reforms in the 1990s and 2000s dramatically increased share repurchases because they relaxed constraints that prevent firms from competing with other...

Security trading now fragments into more than 10 almost identical stock exchanges in the United States. We show that discrete pricing is one economic force that prevents the consolidation of trading volume. The uniform one-cent tick size (minimum price variation), imposed by the SEC's Rule 612,...

We argue that a one-penny minimum tick size for all stocks priced above $1 (SEC rule 612) encourages high-frequency trading and taker/maker–fee markets. We find that non-high frequency traders (non-HFTers) are 2.62 times more likely than HFTers to provide best prices, thereby establishing...

To prevent firms from manipulating prices, U.S. regulators set price ceilings for open-market share repurchases. We find that market structure reforms in the 1990s and 2000s dramatically increased share repurchases because they relaxed constraints that prevent firms from competing with other...

To prevent firms from manipulating prices, U.S. regulators set price ceilings for open-market share repurchases. We find that market-structure reforms in the 1990s and 2000s dramatically increased share repurchases because they relaxed constraints on issuers seeking to compete with other traders...