A recent innovation in equity markets is the introduction of market maker ser-vices paid for by the listed companies themselves. We investigate why firms arewilling to pay a cost to improve the secondary market liquidity of their shares. Weshow that a contributing factor in this decision is the...

This paper analyzes return patterns and determinants at the Oslo Stock Ex-change (OSE) in the period 1980{2006. We nd that a three-factor model con-taining the market, a size factor and a liquidity factor provides a reasonable t forthe cross-section of Norwegian stock returns. As expected, oil...

We document a strong relation between stock market liquidity and the businesscycle. Stock market liquidity worsens when the economy is slowing down, and thiseffect is most pronounced for small firms. Using data for both the US and Norway,we show that stock market liquidity predicts the current...

While the hypothesis that ownership concentration can aect the value of a company has seen a lotof empirical study, little light has been shed on a complementary problem, that these concentratedowners have a cost of their position due to an undiversified portfolio. Using a unique data set ofthe...

We use data on actual holding periods for all investors in a stock market over a10-year period to investigate the links between holding periods, liquidity, and assetreturns. Microstructure measures of liquidity are shown to be important determinantsof the holding period decision of individual...

We empirically investigate the costs of trading equity at the Oslo Stock Exchange inthe period 1980{2008. We show the time series evolution of dierent measures of (implicit)trading costs: bid/ask spreads, the Roll (1984) measure and the Lesmond, Ogden, andTrzcinka (1999) estimate...

Existing evidence using US data show a simultaneous covariability between a stock’s priceand quarterly flows into and out of the stock by institutional investors. In this paper we usedata on monthly changes in holdings by all investor groups at the Oslo Stock Exchange toshow that such...

Can added value be obtained from better collaboration between oil companies and contractors? The topic is addressed by analysing organisational patterns, contracts and compensation formats.Specific issues raised in this paper include the following questions. Are adjustments needed to contractual...

This paper introduces bond market order flow as a predictor variable in term structuremodels and provides evidence that order flow has forecasting ability over and above thatof forward rates. Both in-sample and out-of-sample forecasts show that models includ-ing interdealer order flow outperform...

When assets exhibit asymmetric dependence or joint downside risk, diversificationcan fail and financial markets may be prone to systemic risk. We analyze thedependence structure of risk factors in the US economy, using both correlations anda parsimonious set of copulas. We find evidence of...