This paper examines 472 securities that were listed on Nasdaq and moved to the NYSE or Amex. When Nasdaq market makers avoid odd-eighth quotes, bid-ask spreads are large and decline dramatically with exchange listing. When market makers use both odd and even eighths, spreads are smaller and decline only slightly with exchange listing. The large spreads observed when Nasdaq market makers avoid odd-eighths cannot be explained by security-specific characteristics. Instead, the results support the conclusion that the avoidance of odd-eighth quotes is used as a coordination device among Nasdaq market makers to maintain supra-competitive bid-ask spreads.

This article presents a microstructure model of liquidity provision in which a specialist with market power competes against a competitive limit order book. General solutions, comparative statics and examples are provided first with uninformative orders and then when order flows are informative. The model is also used to address two optimal market design issues. The first is the effect of "tick" size–for example, eighths versus decimal pricing–on market liquidity. Institutions trading large blocks have a larger optimal tick size than small retail investors,but both prefer a tick size strictly greater than zero. Second, a hybrid specialist/limit order market (like the NYSE) provides better liquidity to small retail and institutional trades, but a pure limit order market (like the Paris Bourse) may offer better liquidity on mid-size orders.

Journal Article Liquidity Provision with Limit Orders and a Strategic Specialist Get access Duane J. Seppi Duane J. Seppi Carnegie Mellon University Address correspondence to Duane Seppi, Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Financial Studies, Volume 10, Issue 1, January 1997, Pages 103–150, https://doi.org/10.1093/rfs/10.1.103 Published: 04 June 2015

"This article investigates the role of surprises in marital dissolution [in the United States]. Surprises consists of changes in the predicted earning capacity of either spouse. Data from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 is used. We find that an unexpected increase in the husband's earning capacity reduces the divorce hazard, while an unexpected increase in the wife's earning capacity raises the divorce hazard. Couples sort into marriage according to characteristics that are likely to enhance the stability of the marriage. The divorce hazard is initially increasing with the duration of marriage, and the presence of children and high levels of property stabilizes the marriage."

The conventional approach to social programme evaluation focuses on estimating mean impacts of programmes. Yet many interesting questions regarding the political economy of programmes, the distribution of programme benefits and the option values conferred on programme participants require knowledge of the distribution of impacts, or features of it. This paper presents evidence that heterogeneity in response to programmes is empirically important and that classical probability inequalities are not very informative in producing estimates or bounds on the distribution of programme impacts. We explore two methods for supplementing the information in these inequalities based on assumptions about participant decision-making processes and about the strength in dependence between outcomes in the participation and non-participation states. Dependence is produced as a consequence of rational choice by participants. We test for stochastic rationality among programme participants and present and implement methods for estimating the option values of social programmes.

This paper examines how personal bankruptcy and bankruptcy exemptions affect the supply and demand for credit. While generous state-level bankruptcy exemptions are probably viewed by most policy-makers as benefiting less-well-off borrowers, our results using data from the 1983 Survey of Consumer Finances suggest that they increase the amount of credit held by high-asset households and reduce the availability and amount of credit to low-asset households, conditioning on observable characteristics. Thus, bankruptcy exemptions redistribute credit toward borrowers with high assets. Interest rates on automobile loans for low-asset households also appear to be higher in high exemption states.

This paper examines the benefits from communications made at corporate presentations to securities analysts. We examine whether firms benefit by increasing analyst following or by correcting mispricing, and whether analysts gain by acquiring information that improves the frequency or quality of their forecasts. The results show significant increases in analyst following, and significantly positive abnormal returns on the presentation date, with larger reactions observed for underpriced securities. Finally, although we find an increase in forecasting activity following the presentations, we find no evidence that analysts' post-presentation forecasts are less disperse, more accurate or less biased than their pre-presentation forecasts.

The trading structure differences between the NYSE and the Nasdaq market could produce different levels of trading liquidity. Several studies have attempted to measure these differences by comparing bid-ask spreads. This paper uses an alternative approach to compare liquidity. We analyze three issues: (1) the frequencies of the sizes and types of block trades found in the two markets, (2) the immediate price effects of the block transactions, and (3) the temporary and permanent price effects of the blocks. We find evidence that the NYSE system provides more liquidity for block transactions.