In OTC bond markets many investors face high costs of trade, and these costs appear to berelated to the lack of price transparency. We study the consequences this has for efficient pricediscovery. Prices of municipal bonds react sluggishly to macroeconomic news. Yield spreads overtreasuries...

Municipal bonds trade in opaque, decentralized broker-dealer markets in which price information is costly to gather. Whether dealers in such a market operate competitively is an empirical issue, but a difficult one to study. Data in such markets is generally not centrally recorded. We analyze a...

Bonds are traded in over-the-counter markets, where opacity and fragmentation imply large transaction costs for retail investors. Is there something special about bonds, in contrast to stocks, precluding transparent limit-order markets? Historical experience suggests this is not the case. Before...

We propose a model in which firms involved in trading securities overinvest in financial expertise. Intermediaries or traders in the model meet and bargain over a financial asset. As in the bargaining model in Dang (2008), counterparties endogenously decide whether to acquire information, which...

We study trading and prices in newly issued municipal bonds. Municipals, which trade in decentralized, broker-dealer markets, are underpriced when issued, but unlike equities the average price rises slowly over a period of several days. We document high levels of price dispersion in newly issued...

Build America Bonds (BABs) were issued by municipalities for 20 months as a part of the 2009 fiscal package. Unlike traditional tax-exempt municipals, BABs are taxable to the holder, but the Treasury rebates 35% of the coupon to the issuer. The stated purpose was to provide municipalities access...