This paper investigates whether the market level of information asymmetry affects firms’ debt financing decisions. Using a sample of non-financial listed firms and a composite index based on microstructure measures of information asymmetry, we find that firms with more information asymmetry...

On many equity markets, designated market makers (DMMs) supply additional liquidity for small and mid cap stocks. Whereas prior research has focused on their role in continuous trading, we analyze their activity in call auctions. Using data from Germany's Xetra system, we find that DMMs are most...

Advances in variance analysis permit the splitting of the total quadratic variation of a jump diffusion process into upside and downside components. Recent studies establish that this decomposition enhances volatility predictions, and highlight the upside/downside variance spread as a driver of...

We propose a new method to implement the Business Time Sampling (BTS) scheme for high-frequency financial data. We compute a time-transformation (TT) function using the intraday integrated volatility estimated by a jump-robust method. The BTS transactions are obtained using the inverse of the TT...

We study front-running by high frequency traders (HFTs) in a limit order model with continuous trading. The model describes an evolutionary equilibrium of low frequency traders (LFTs) who compete in portfolio management services by offering investment styles. The introduction of front-runners...

This paper develops a pairs trading framework based on a mean-reverting jump-diffusion model and applies it to minute-by-minute data of the S&P 500 oil companies from 1998 to 2015. The established statistical arbitrage strategy enables us to perform intraday and overnight trading. Essentially,...

We use the introduction of a financial transaction tax (FTT) in France in 2012 to test competing theories on its impact. We find no support for the idea that an FTT improves market quality by affecting the composition of trading volume. Instead, our results are in line with the hypothesis that a...