This paper provides primary evidence of whether certification via reputable underwriters is beneficial to investors in the corporate bond market. We focus on the high-yield bond market, in which certification of issuer quality is most valuable to investors owing to low liquidity and issuing...

This paper studies how institutional characteristics of Specified Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) are related to their post-merger survival. SPACs are unique financial firms that conduct the IPO with the solely purpose to use the proceeds to acquire another private company. Paper finds...

We analyse whether different levels of country ties to Europe among the rating agencies Moody's, S&P, and Fitch affect the assignment of sovereign credit ratings, using the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis of 2009-2012 as a natural laboratory. We find that Fitch, the rating agency among the "Big...

We study the role of informed trading in a fragmented financial market under the absence of inter-market price priority. Due to frictions in traders’ market access, liquidity providers on alternative trading platforms may be exposed to an increased adverse selection risk. As a consequence, the...

This paper studies the stock market response to corporate downgrades by S&P, Moody's and Fitch between 1999 and 2011. The empirical evidence shows that cumulative abnormal returns around downgrades become significantly smaller (in absolute value) after the release in 2003 of the Securities and...

To meet general objectives of the article, i.e. to check the extent to which the information needs of financial market institutions are satisfied, and to learn about whether there is a transition in this realm triggered by the advent of social media and big data, we surveyed a sample of 415...

The trading of private securities has recently gained greater visibility and importance with the advent of organized, private security exchanges. This paper uses data on IPO firms that list on the SharesPost private securities exchange platform to examine the potential benefits of a listing....

The Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act of 2012 in the U.S. expanded the capital markets so that entrepreneurs can appeal directly to non-traditional small crowd investors for investment funds. The final rules and forms of the JOBS Act became effective in May 16, 2016. Existing literature...

In 2015, TSX Alpha, a Canadian stock exchange, implemented a speed bump for marketable orders and an inverted fee structure as part of a redesign. We find no evidence that this redesign impacted market-wide measures of trading costs or contributed appreciably to segmenting retail order flow away...

The aim of this report has been to produce an analysis of the state of the social enterprises in Finland. Based on a comprehensive survey, there are roughly 19 000 social enterprises in Finland that employ around 125 000 persons. These estimates produced in this report multiply the views on the...