We examine execution costs for trades in NYSE issues completed on the NYSE, the NASD dealer market, and the regional stock exchanges during 1994. We find that effective bid-ask spreads are only slightly smaller at the NYSE. However, realized bid-ask spreads, which measure market-making revenue net of losses to betterinformed traders but gross of inventory or order-processing costs, are lower on the NYSE by a factor of two to three. This differential is attributable to the successful ‘cream skimming’ of uninformed trades by off-NYSE market makers. These findings reinforce existing concerns about whether orders are routed so as to receive the best possible execution.

Nasdaq's Small Order Execution System (SOES) allows orders to be submitted by computer, thereby assuring rapid execution at quoted prices. We examine trading in the 20 largest Nasdaq stocks around the time of a rule change that reduced the largest SOES trades from 1000 to 500 shares. We show that SOES trades contain information about short-term price movements and that SOES trading declined dramatically with the rule change. However, quoted and effective spreads were unaffected by the rule change.

We compare top management turnover in unacquired U.S. industrial companies during an active takeover market (1984–1988) and a less active takeover market (1989–1993). For firms in the lowest quartile of performance (measured by operating income scaled by assets). 33% experience complete turnover of the president, CEO, and board chair during the active takeover period and only 17% experience complete turnover during the less active period. Controlling for various determinants of management turnover, we provide evidence that turnover and performance are related only in the active takeover period, and conclude that takeover activity affects the intensity of managerial discipline.

Going public typically leads to a separation of managerial control and stock ownership, and potentially worsens managerial incentives. We document that the median ownership stake of officers and directors declines significantly from the year before going public to ten years later. Median operating return on assets also declines from the year before the offering to the end of the first year of public trading, but performance declines no further in ten years. In general, operating performance both within one year of the offering and during the first ten years of public trading is unrelated to ownership of officers and directors.

We study changes in the real estate industry among organizational forms with varying degrees of restrictiveness and document the associated changes in profitability, free cash flow, debt, dividends, and investment policies. All troubled firms in our sample move to a more flexible organizational structure, with subsequent reductions in dividends, improvements in performance, and increases in asset sales and investments. Healthy firms that move to a tighter structure have larger free cash flows before the change; they increase dividends, reduce free cash flows and improve profitability after the change. We document evidence of tax considerations in organizational changes.