Economic theory suggests that speculative trading can lead to instability in financial markets. Using a novel dataset on retail trading activity in the US, this study extends the literature and investigates the impact of retail (speculative) trading on the volatility of the financial markets...

This paper examines the effect of capital account liberalization on stock market crashes using both de jure and de facto measures of capital account liberalization. Using a sample of 64 countries over the time period of 1973-2016, we show that with restricted de jure capital account...

Energy is one of the most basic requirements of modern economic life in the world. The international oil prices and stock markets have important relationships with each other. This paper examines the impact of crude oil price growth on stock market crashes at different levels of financial...

This study investigates the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the microstructure of US equity markets. In particular, we explain the liquidity and volatility dynamics via indexes that capture multiple dimensions of the pandemic. Our results suggest that increases in confirmed cases and deaths due...