This paper examines the behavior of institutional traders. We use unique data on the equity transactions of 21 institutions of differing investment styles which provide a detailed account of the anatomy of the trading process. The data include information on the number of days needed to fill an order and types of order placement strategies employed. We analyze the motivations for trade, the determinants of trade duration, and the choice of order type. The analysis provides some support for the predictions made by theoretical models, but suggests that these models fail to capture important dimensions of trading behavior.

We study the managerial labor market's ability to discriminate between good and bad managerial performance. Using a sample of failed and nonfailed Texas banks, we find that the context of job loss affects the manager's ability to regain comparable employment. Managers associated with banks that failed for reasons arguably beyond the managers' control were twice as likely to regain comparable banking posts as managers at other failed banks. We also detect a relation between the probability of post-failure reemployment and a manager's rank within the firm and to proxies for managerial self-dealing and competence.