The general concept of a Securities Transaction Tax is controversial among academics and politicians. While theoretical research is quite advanced, the empirical guidance in a fragmented market context is still scarce. Possible negative effects for market liquidity and market efficiency are...

The returns on bank stocks rise and fall with the business cycle, making bank equity financing cheaper in the boom and dearer during a recession. This provides support for prudential tools that give incentives for banks to build capital buffers at times when the cost of equity is lower. In...

Recent research has separately uncovered that stock ownership strongly correlates with both expectations and realizations of stock market returns, as well as with measures of financial literacy, ability or trust. This paper reconciles all, and reports new findings from a unique survey containing...