We examine the impact on stock prices of a major upgrade to the New York Stock Exchange's trading environment. The upgrade improved information dissemination on the trading floor and reduced the latency in reporting trades and quotes. The portion of the upgrade that reduced latency for...

In the current credit crisis there is little or no trade in a variety of financial assets, even though bids and asks exist for many of these assets. We develop a model in which this illiquidity arises from uncertainty, and we argue that this new form of illiquidity makes bid and ask prices...