We study the effects that the ban on short sales of shares in financial firms introduced in late 2008 and removed early 2009 had on the microstructure and the quality of UK equity markets. We show that the ban did nothing to affect order flows: financial stocks were being more aggressively sold...

We subdivide trades on the London Stock Exchange according to their reaction times. We classify an aggressive order as 'fast' if it executes against a standing limit order that is less than 50 milliseconds old. We show that fast trades are associated with smaller execution costs than slow...

This paper discusses five indicators of competitiveness: real exchange rates based on consumer price indices, export unit values of manufacturing goods, the relative price of traded to nontraded goods, normalized unit labor costs in manufacturing, and the ratio of normalized unit labor costs to...