The rapid growth of derivative markets has raised concerns about counterparty risk. It has been argued that their mutual guarantee funds provide an adequate safety net. While this mutualization of risk protects clients and brokers from idiosyncratic shocks, it is generally assumed that it also...

A surge in orders during the stock market boom of the late 1920s collided against the constraint created by the fixed number of brokers on the New York Stock Exchange. Estimates of the determinants of individual stock bid-ask spreads from panel data reveal that spreads jumped when volume spiked,...

In this paper, we re-examine the stock market of the 1920s and 1930s for evidence of a bubble, a 'fad' or 'herding' behavior by studying individual stock returns. One story often advanced for the boom of 1928 and 1929 is that it was driven by the entry into the market of largely uninformed...

Standard tests find that no bubbles are present in the stock price data for the last one hundred years. In contrast., historical accounts, focusing on briefer periods, point to the stock market of 1928-1929 as a classic example of a bubble. While previous studies have restricted their attention...

A surge in orders during the stock market boom of the late 1920s collided against the constraint created by the fixed number of brokers on the New York Stock Exchange. Estimates of the determinants of individual stock bid-ask spreads from panel data reveal that spreads jumped when volume spiked,...