The differences between ECNs and Nasdaq market makers are used to formulate and test several hypotheses about the choice of trading venue and the importance of ECN trades in the price discovery process. Trades are more likely to occur on ECNs when spreads are narrow and when trading volume and...

We compare the execution quality of trades with market makers to trades executed on Electronic Communications Networks (ECNs). Average quoted, realized, and effective spreads are smaller for ECN trades than for market-maker trades even though ECN trades are more informative than trades with...

The capital asset pricing model (CAPM) performs poorly overall as market risk (beta) is weakly related to 24-hour returns. This is because stock prices behave very differently with respect to their sensitivity to beta when markets are open for trading versus when they are closed. Stock returns...

This paper examines the effects of pre-trade opacity on market liquidity in the presence of market fragmentation. In the laboratory, we create a fragmented market by allowing trading on two venues (i.e., limit order books). By varying the features on one of the venues, we study the treatment...

We show short selling in corporate bonds forecasts future bond returns. Short selling predicts bond returns where private information is more likely, in high-yield bonds, particularly after Lehman's collapse. Short selling predicts returns following both high and low past bond returns. This,...

We examine the effects of high frequency traders (HFTs) on liquidity using the September 2008 short sale ban. To disentangle the separate impacts of short selling by HFTs and non-HFTs we use an instrumental variables approach exploiting differences in the ban's cross-sectional impact on HFTs and...

We provide evidence on market structure and the cost of raising capital by examining market structure changes in US equity markets. Only the Nasdaq's Order Handling Rules (OHR), the one reform that reduced institutional trading costs, lowered the cost of raising capital. Using a...

We analyze the contribution to price discovery of market and limit orders by high frequency traders (HFTs) and non-HFTs. While market orders have a larger individual price impact, limit orders are far more numerous. This results in price discovery occurring predominantly through limit orders....

We study price pressures, i.e., deviations from the efficient price due to risk-averse intermediaries supplying liquidity to asynchronously arriving investors. Empirically, New York Stock Exchange intermediary data reveals economically large price pressures, 0.49% on average with a half life of...

Regulators and some large investors have recently raised concerns about temporary or transitory volatility in highly automated financial markets. It is far from clear that high-frequency trading, fragmentation, and automation are contributing to transitory volatility, but some institutions...