We document pervasive informed trading activity in equity options before M&A announcements. About 25% of takeovers have positive abnormal volumes. These volume patterns indicate that informed traders are likely using bullish directional strategies for the target and volatility strategies for the...

We provide evidence of unreported trading by corporate insiders in their own firm's shares and link this activity to future firm earnings and analyst forecast error. Unreported trading represent discrepancies between insider shareholdings from trades they report to the Exchange and their...

We examine insider trading surrounding takeover rumors in a sample of 1,642 publicly traded U.S. firms. Using difference-in-differences regressions, we find that insider net purchases increase within the year prior to the first publication of a takeover rumor, particularly when rumor articles...

This study examines the effect of tax enforcement on informed trading by corporate insiders. Building on prior work suggesting that the tax authority can discipline managerial misconduct (Dyck and Zingales 2004; Desai, Dyck, and Zingales 2007), we hypothesize that the increased scrutiny from an IRS...

This study analyzes the effectiveness of the Market Abuse Directive (MAD) in reducing possible profits from insider trading during voluntary tender offers with the purpose of delisting initiated by controlling shareholders. Exploiting the quasi-experimental setting provided by the introduction...

This paper examines the association between ineffective internal control over financial reporting and the profitability of insider trading. We predict and find that the profitability of insider trading is significantly greater in firms disclosing material weaknesses in internal control relative...