The 1964 Securities Acts Amendments extended disclosures mandated of NYSE firms to most firms trading in the Over-the-Counter (OTC) market. Although some prior evidence suggests substantial value increases for OTC firms due to the quot;value enhancingquot; mandated disclosures, we find no...

Brokers who route both market and limit orders to wholesalers are generally paid less for their orders than brokers who bifurcate their order flow. Since nonmarketable limit orders have priority over wholesalers at a price, limit orders routed to wholesalers may experience enhanced execution...

An exercise boundary violation (EBV) occurs when the current bid price for an American option in the market is below intrinsic value. A seller at this price leaves money on the table and the buyer receives an arbitrage profit. In a liquid market, competition among dealers should drive up the bid...

Do option investors rationally exercise their options? Numerous studies report evidence of irrational behavior. In this paper, we pay careful attention to intraday option quotes and reach the opposite conclusion. An exercise boundary violation (EBV) occurs when the best bid price for an American...

In response to the sharp decline in prices of financial stocks in the fall of 2008, regulators in a number of countries banned short selling of particular stocks and industries. Evidence suggests that these bans did little to stop the slide in stock prices, but significantly increased costs of...

We examine the changes in order flow on NASDAQ from 1993 through 2010. We find that while volume and the number of trades are increasing for NASDAQ-listed securities, the percentage of volume that executes on NASDAQ declines from almost 100% in the 1990's to less than 40% in 2010. We examine the...

In 2008, U.S. regulators banned the short-selling of financial stocks, fearing that the practice was helping to drive the steep drop in stock prices during the crisis. However, a new look at the effects of such restrictions challenges the notion that short sales exacerbate market downturns in...

We use a novel dataset to examine the impact of exposing institutional orders to electronic liquidity providers (ELPs). We present empirical evidence that marketable pieces of large parent orders are routed to ELPs, seemingly to avoid paying liquidity fees on exchanges. This routing decision...