In this paper, we look at the effect of the financial crisis from an angle overlooked to date in the finance literature by investigating composition effects arising from the financial crisis. A composition effect is a change in the market risk of a sector that is caused not by a direct change in...

In 2014 the Prudential Regulation Authority, Bank of England, was given a new secondary objective to facilitate effective competition when it advances its primary objectives related to safety and soundness and policyholder protection. Given the concerns around conflict between competition and...

This study presents the first comprehensive compilation of the number of people around the world who own shares directly and indirectly. We document that at least 310 million people in 59 countries (24 developed and 35 emerging market nations) own stock directly [Table 1]. Nearly 173 million of...

This paper brings together the academic literature on individual and institutional investors in order to understand the nature of difficulties faced by them and set the background for the Special Issue. This introductory article and the papers in the Special Issue contribute to the debate on how...