We study the impact of the adoption of zero commissions by major retail brokers and find that retail brokers that started charging zero commissions dramatically increase their market share of client assets. In addition, these retail brokers increasingly routed orders off exchange (i.e., OTC) to...

We employ NASDAQ order level data to analyze intraday trading at option expirations and cross-market price pressure spillover. Algorithmic traders appear to place proportionately more fleeting orders in optionable stocks on option expiration versus non-expiration days. Since most observed...

We show theoretically that a novel nonlinear interaction of fund flows and returns plays a central role in either moderating or amplifying the portfolio rebalancing demand of levered and inverse-levered ETFs (LETFs). Rebalancing, in turn, affects underlying’s and market’s return volatility....

Zero-commission brokers increasingly route orders to wholesale market-makers and away from exchanges to possibly earn more PFOF in compensation for commission losses. Retail investors move assets to zero-commission brokers, whose assets increase 7%, despite investors’ awareness of potential...

Although it is well established that investors are willing to accept a negative premium for lottery-like stocks, it is puzzling that the opposite effect is not observed in stocks experiencing large daily losses. We find that stocks that experience large negative daily returns (MIN) also display...

US state pension plans generally use overstated discount rates based on historical performance, creating the appearance of healthy funding at the cost of future underfunding. Conversely, adopting a US Treasury discount rate, or another alternative suggested by previous literature, would cause...

As most of the state pensions in the USA deal with their respective funding crisis, we compare the management approaches undertaken by funds located in the states that are governed by Republicans vis-à-vis funds that are located in states governed by Democrats. We find that pension funds...

Social media not only is a new channel to obtain financial market information but also becomes the venue for investors to share and exchange investment ideas. We examine the performance consequences of providing monetary incentive to both existing and new amateur analysts on social media and its...

Does fake news in financial markets attract more investor attention and have a significant impact on stock prices? We use the SEC crackdown of stock promotion schemes in April 2017 to examine investor attention and the stock price reaction to fake news articles. Using data from Seeking Alpha, we...

Digital distribution introduces many new strategic questions for the creative industries, notably how the use of new digital channels will impact sales in established channels. We analyze this question in the context of ebook and hardcover sales by exploiting a natural experiment that...