ABSTRACT We study pre‐trade transparency by looking at the introduction of NYSE's OpenBook service that provides limit‐order book information to traders off the exchange floor. We find that traders attempt to manage limit‐order exposure: They submit smaller orders and cancel orders faster. Specialists' participation rate and the depth they add to the quote decline. Liquidity increases in that the price impact of orders declines, and we find some improvement in the informational efficiency of prices. These results suggest that an increase in pre‐trade transparency affects investors' trading strategies and can improve certain dimensions of market quality.

We study how a significant relaxation of internal migration restrictions affects labor market outcomes of incumbent migrants and natives, exploiting the 2014 hukou reform in China, which substantially removed the migration barriers of cities with an urban population below 5 million (nonmegacities). Using a difference-in-differences method, we find that migrants’ wages in nonmegacities experienced approximately a 2.6%–7.9% decline relative to that in megacities after the policy. The policy had nonnegative impacts on the wages of natives in nonmegacities. These results suggest that the downward wage pressure imposed by new migrants falls primarily on incumbent migrants rather than on natives.

We investigate how the presence of a college affects local educational attainment. As counterfactuals for current college locations, we use historical “runner-up” locations that were strongly considered to become college sites but were ultimately not chosen. We find that winning counties today have college degree attainment rates 56% higher than runner-up counties and more private-sector employment in human-capital-intensive industries. These effects are not driven primarily by recent in-migration of educated adults, and alternative public investments did not have similar effects on local educational attainment. The results indicate that colleges played an important role in shaping long-run local outcomes.