The introduction of shelf registration in 1982 is used to examine the extent of price‐taking behavior among investment banks. Changes in underwriting syndicates are compared with the concomitant adjustment in underwriting spreads and management fees. The evidence is consistent with higher organizing costs and/or market power in the underwriting syndicate. Evidence on the components of the spreads and syndicate composition during the introduction of shelf registration is also presented.

[In a one-period model of market making with many exogenously informed traders, we first show that the variance of prices and expected trading volume depend on the public information released at the start of trading. This is accomplished by representing beliefs with elliptically contoured distributions, for which the form of optimal decision rules does not depend on the specific distribution used. Second, if the model is altered so that the decision to become informed is made endogenous, then the decision rules of the market-maker and informed traders depend on the public information. Third, in a multiperiod model with many informed traders and long-lived private information, recursion formulas similar to those of Kyle (1985) hold for all elliptically contoured distributions, trading volume is autocorrelated, and, unless per period liquidity trading is bounded away from zero as new trading periods are added, informed traders' profits vanish.]

[In an adverse selection model of a securities market with one informed trader and several liquidity traders, we study the implications of the assumption that the informed trader has more information on Monday than on other days. We examine the interday variations in volume, variance, and adverse selection costs, and find that on Monday the trading costs and the variance of price changes are highest, and the volume is lower than on Tuesday. These effects are stronger for firms with better public reporting and for firms with more discretionary liquidity trading.]

The authors analyze a multiperiod model of trading with differentially informed traders, liquidity traders, and a marketmaker. Each informed trader's initial information is a noisy estimate of the long-term value of the asset and the different signals received by informed traders can have a variety of correlation structures. With this setup, informed traders not only compete with each other for trading profits, they also learn about other traders' signals from the observed order flow. The authors' work suggests that the initial correlation among the informed traders' signals has a significant effect on the informed traders' profits and the informativeness of prices.

Patterns in stock market trading volume, trading costs, and return volatility are examined using New York Stock Excha nge data from 1988. Intraday test results indicate that, for actively traded firms trading volume, adverse selection costs, and return volatility are higher in the first half-hour of the day. This eviden ce is inconsistent with the Admati and Pfleiderer (1988) model which predicts that trading costs are low when volume and return volatilit y are high. Interday test results show that, for actively traded firms , trading volume is low and adverse selection costs are high on Monday , which is consistent with the predictions of the Foster and Viswanath an (1990) model.

F. Douglas Foster, S. Viswanathan, Variations in Trading Volume, Return Volatility, and Trading Costs: Evidence on Recent Price Formation Models, The Journal of Finance, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Mar., 1993), pp. 187-211

F. Douglas Foster, S. Viswanathan, Strategic Trading with Asymmetrically Informed Traders and Long-Lived Information, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Dec., 1994), pp. 499-518

In a one-period model of market making with many exogenously informed traders, we first show that the variance of prices and expected trading volume depend on the public information released at the start of trading. This is accomplished by representing beliefs with elliptically contoured distributions, for which the form of optimal decision rules does not depend on the specific distribution used. Second, if the model is altered so that the decision to become informed is made endogenous, then the decision rules of the market-maker and informed traders depend on the public information. Third, in a multiperiod model with many informed traders and long-lived private information, recursion formulas similar to those of Kyle (1985) hold for all elliptically contoured distributions, trading volume is autocorrelated and, unless per period liquidity trading is bounded away from zero as new trading periods are added, informed traders’ profits vanish.

In an adverse selection model of a securities market with one informed trader and several liquidity traders, we study the implications of the assumption that the informed trader has more information on Monday than on other days. We examine the interday variations in volume, variance, and adverse selection costs, and find that on monday the trading costs and the variance of price changes are highest, and the volume is lower than on Tuesday. These effects are stronger for firms with better public reporting and for firms with more discretionary liquidity trading.