We explain the importance of Market Microstructure in the study of the Financial Markets, and then describe the Market Participants who collectively comprise the Financial Market. After a short history of capital markets, we describe the transition of the trading activities from the physical...

The present article contains a brief but comprehensive overview of the development of the Capital Markets Union (CMU) project in the EU to further deepen EU capital markets’ integration. After the Introduction, it first discusses the Commission’s 2015 CMU Action Plan and its follow-up,...

We examine the private information associated with insider trades using a Chinese data set. Insider buys positively forecast individual stock returns and insider sales negatively forecast individual stock returns. Classifying insiders as corporate managers and institutional investors, we find...

We examine the relationship between the tonality of news flow and the cross section of expected stock returns. We use a comprehensive definition of media coverage that includes both financial newspapers and mass media, represented by TV broadcasts. Using the total news flow with positive and...

China’s pension system is facing a large gap of more than one trillion RMB. The investment efficiency of the social security fund therefore receives widespread attention in academic circles. We collected data of stocks held by the Chinese National Council for Social Security Fund (CNCSSF) from...

China's pension system is facing a large gap of more than one trillion RMB. The investment efficiency of the social security fund therefore receives widespread attention in academic circles. We collected data of stocks held by the Chinese National Council for Social Security Fund (CNCSSF) from...

We analyze a unique, comprehensive, multi-decade dataset of all communications with clients by a boutique investment advisory and investment management firm to explore the behavior of individuals involved in financial decision making. We propose and test a theory of self-regulation to explain...

Czarnitzki and Stadtmann (2005) measure the interdependence of demand for investment advice (approximated by sales of investor magazines) and stock prices. They find strong evidence that confirms the presence of the disposition effect, i.e. the empirical observation that investors sell winners...

The interplay between investors' demand and providers' incentives has shaped the evolution of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). While early ETFs offered diversification at low cost, later ETFs track niche portfolios and charge high fees. Strikingly, over their first five years, specialized ETFs lose...