Strong conflicts of interest exist within investment banks: the investment banking division possesses substantial private information and the asset management division seeks such information. This raises the question of whether the asset management division benefits from an information advantage...

Using corporate insiders' employment data, I study the impact of political connections on corporate insiders' trading behavior. I find that purchases (sales) by politically connected corporate insiders are associated with lower (higher) abnormal returns compared with non-politically connected...

We use the largest cross-country sample of reported share transactions by corporate insiders to date to establish that insiders in the majority of European countries do not make statistically significant abnormal trading profits. This finding stands in contrast to the earlier evidence from the...

The current SEC regulation section 13(f) allows financial institutions to delay the disclosure of their quarter-end stock holdings up to 45 days. Motivated by a recent regulatory debate about the appropriate length of delay for disclosures, I develop a model to examine a financial institution's...

Opportunistic inside-traders are known to trade specific financial contracts, such as options, to maximise the economic benefits arising from their private information. However, the recent conviction of inside-traders Kamay and Hill in the foreign exchange markets demonstrates more complex...

We assess whether restrictions on insider trading accelerate or slow technological innovation. Based on over 75,000 industry-country-year observations across 94 economies from 1976 to 2006, we find that enforcing insider-trading laws spurs innovation — as measured by patent intensity, scope,...

Stock prices incorporate less “news” before negative events than positive events. Further, we find evidence that informed agents use less price aggressive (limit) orders before negative events and more price aggressive (market) orders before positive events ("buy-sell asymmetry"). Motivated...

In this paper I examine the relationship between credit rating and insider trading of 301 firms from 2000-2006 for S&P 500 Index firms. I argue that changes to the firm credit rating may increase (decrease) informed trading activities. This investigation is essential since insiders with private...

We study the behavior of short sellers as informed market participants and examine potential sources of their information. Using a newly available dataset with high-frequency short sales data, we find evidence of significant increases in short sales immediately prior to large insider sales, but...

We examine the impact of stock exchange trading rules and surveillance on the frequency and severity of suspected insider trading cases in 22 stock exchanges around the world over the period January 2003-June 2011. Using new indices for market manipulation, insider trading, and broker-agency...