This paper develops a model to study the formation and regulation of information transmission networks. We analyze a cat and mouse game between a regulator, who sets and enforces a regulatory environment, and agents, who form networks to disseminate and share insider information. For any given...

How do insiders respond to regulatory oversight? History suggests that they form sophisticated networks to share information and circumvent regulation. We develop a theory of the formation and regulation of information transmission networks. We show that agents with sufficiently complex networks...

How do insiders respond to regulatory oversight on transmissions? History suggests that they form more sophisticated networks to circumvent regulation. We develop a theory of the formation and regulation of transmission networks. We show that agents with sufficiently complex networks bypass any...

This paper exploits a novel hand-collected dataset to provide a comprehensive analysis of the social relationships that underlie illegal insider trading networks. I find that inside information flows through strong social ties based on family, friends, and geographic proximity. On average,...

This paper exploits hand-collected data on illegal insider trades to provide new evidence of the ability of standard measures of illiquidity to detect informed trading. Controlling for unobserved cross-sectional and time-series variation, sampling bias, and strategic timing of insider trades, I...

Insider trading during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic provides a unique opportunity to study how corporate insiders benefit from information flows in their network of business contacts. I find that insiders at firms with activities in China sell more shares of their companies than...

We analyze the trading of corporate insiders at leading financial institutions during the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis. We find strong evidence of a relation between political connections and informed trading during the period in which TARP funds were disbursed, and that the relation is most...

This paper examines the pattern and profitability of institutional trades around takeover announcements. We find that the trades of funds as a group, either before or after takeover announcements, are not profitable. However, funds whose main broker is also a target advisor are net buyers of...

Merger and Acquisition (M&A) activities are not well-anticipated corporate events in the equity market. Do institutional investors possess material non-public information before M&A announcements? Using a novel methodology that infers high frequency institutional trading, this paper investigates...

We examine the impact of CDS trading and the lifting of short sales restrictions on the profitability of reported insider trades within US financial firms. We find evidence that executive directors possess significant insider knowledge about their firm's risk prior to the initiation of CDS...