This paper addresses the question of whether transaction costs affect stock prices. This question, in the intersection of market microstructure and asset pricing, has no supportive causal evidence to this date, which may explain the omission of transaction costs in mainstream asset pricing...

Stock exchange operators compete for order flow by setting "make" fees for limit orders and "take" fees for market orders. When traders quote continuous prices, they can choose prices that perfectly neutralize any fee division, and traders stream to the exchange with the lowest total fee. The...

We show that queueing rationing under price controls drives high-frequency trading. A one-cent uniform tick size (minimal price variation) creates rents and generates queues for liquidity provision, particularly for securities with lower prices (larger relative tick sizes). Speed rations the...

Do stock prices of publicly listed companies respond to changes in transaction costs? Using the SEC's pilot program that increased the tick size for approximately 1,200 randomly chosen stocks, we find a stock price decrease between 1.75% and 3.2% for small spread stocks affected by the larger...

Security trading now fragments into more than 10 almost identical stock exchanges in the United States. We show that discrete pricing is one economic force that prevents the consolidation of trading volume. The uniform one-cent tick size (minimum price variation), imposed by the SEC's Rule 612,...

Uncertainties are becoming more and more diverse around the world, and risks and impacts affecting the healthy development of cities are increasing. Fostering urban social resilience is not only a proactive countermeasure to growing external pressures and potential impacts, but also an important...

Can fixed exchange rate regimes cause output divergence among member states? We show that such divergence is a long-run equilibrium characteristic of a two-region model with fixed exchange rates, heterogeneous labor markets, and endogenous growth. Under flexible exchange rates, monetary policy...

We estimate the contribution of the American precious metal windfall to West Europe's growth performance in the early modern period. The exogenous nature of American money arrivals allows for identification of monetary effects. We find that more than half of West Europe's growth can be...

Productivity assessment has received increased attention over the past several years. At the same time, the focus has moved from single-factor productivity measures, or attempts to characterize performance in terms of simple ratios, to a multi-factor construct. In this dissertation, I propose a...