We consider a multi-period rational expectations model in which risk-averse investors differ in their information on past transaction prices (the ticker). Some investors (insiders) observe prices in real-time whereas other investors (outsiders) observe prices with a delay. As prices are...

Die Vorstellung selbst-stabilisierender, zum Gleichgewicht tendierender Finanzmärkte, lange Zeit als Selbstverständlichkeit angesehen, ist durch die aktuelle Banken- und Kreditkrise in Frage gestellt. Trotz ausgefeilten Risikomanagements der Banken und einer an Basel II orientierten Aufsicht...

The new regulatory environment triggered by MiFID has resulted in a transformed competitive landscape and increased fragmentation among execution venues in Europe. One key component of MiFID is best execution, i.e. investment firms are obliged to achieve the best result for customer orders on a...

Bayesian learning provides the core concept of processing noisy information. In standard Bayesian frameworks, assessing the price impact of information requires perfect knowledge of news' precision. In practice, however, precision is rarely dis- closed. Therefore, we extend standard Bayesian...

A low interest rate environment can pose a key risk to the life insurance sector. A deteriorating return on investment holdings jeopardizes the guaranteed return on life insurance contracts. In this paper, we examine the effect of low interest rates on German life insurers by applying various...

Recent empirical research suggests that measures of investor sentiment have predictive power for future stock returns over the intermediate and long term. Given the widespread publication of sentiment indicators, smart investors should trade on the information conveyed by such indicators and...

The paper explores whether the co-movement of market returns and equity fund flows can be explained by a common response to macroeconomic news. I find that variables that predict the real economy as well as the equity premium are related to mutual fund flows. Changes in dividend-price ratio...

The overvaluation hypothesis (Miller 1977) predicts that a) stocks are overvalued in the presence of short selling restrictions and that b) the overvaluation increases in the degree of divergence of opinion. We design an experiment that allows us to test these predictions in the laboratory. The...

We study the impact of the arrival of macroeconomic news on the informational and noise-driven components in high-frequency quote processes and their conditional variances. Bid and ask returns are decomposed into a common ('efficient return') factor and two market-side-specific components...

This paper investigates the impact of the 2001 tax reform in Germany on dividend announcement returns. With this major tax reform, the full imputation system was replaced by the half-income system, which had a significant impact on the relative taxation of dividends and capital gains for most...