Speculators can discover whether a signal is true or false by processing it but this takes time. Hence they face a trade-off between trading fast on a signal (i.e., before processing it), at the risk of trading on a false positive, or trading after processing the signal, at the risk that prices...

In this study we re-examine the pricing of equity and the risk incentives of shareholders in levered firms. We derive a down-and-out call equity valuation model which rests on the assumption that shareholders choose the optimal investment and asset returns' volatility as a function of current...

Aggregate art price patterns mask a lot of underlying variation — both in the time series and in the cross-section. The authors argue that, to increase our understanding of the market for aesthetics, it is helpful to take a micro perspective on the formation of art prices, and acknowledge that...

High frequency arbitrage opportunities arise when the price of one asset follows, with a lag, changes in the value of another related asset due to information arrival. These opportunities are toxic because they expose liquidity suppliers to the risk of being picked off by arbitrageurs. Hence,...

High-speed market connections and information processing improve …nancial institutions'ability to seize trading opportunities, which raises gains from trade. They also enable fast traders to process information before slow traders, which generates adverse selection. We fi…rst analyze trading...

By focusing on the highly innovative retail market for structured products, we investigate the drivers of financial complexity. We perform a lexicographic analysis of the term sheets of 55,000 retail structured products issued in Europe since 2002. We observe that financial complexity has been...

In this paper, we use the investment fraud of Bernard Madoff to inquire into the production of trust in the context of financial markets. Drawing upon empirical data related to U.S. individual investors (interviews and letters) as well as documentary material, we investigate the mechanisms...

This paper presents a model of trading in unique durable assets that provide idiosyncratic payoffs, such as art, luxury real estate, and firm subsidiaries. Agents make purchase and sale decisions in an auction market based on their private use value of the asset and on the expected resale...

This paper investigates the determinants of value and growth investing in a large administrative panel of Swedish residents over the 1999-2007 period. The authors document strong relationships between a household's portfolio tilt and the household's financial and demographic characteristics....

We build a dynamic model of investment and financing decisions to study the choice between bonds and bank loans in a firm's marginal financing decision and its effects on corporate investment. We show that firms with more growth options, higher bargaining power in default, operating in more...