For listed stocks, total trading costs, inclusive of commissions, reveal electronic trading to be superior to traditional brokerage across a variety of measures of trade difficulty. Evidence From The Reform Act of 1978, with Robert Sartain, 1999. We ask whether new incentives embedded in a major legal change have their anticipated impact on personal bankruptcy chapter choice. The evidence is based on data at the level of the household shortly before and after the 1978 Bankruptcy Reform Act. Structural chapter choice models predict a substantial portion of the increase in the proportion of reorganizational filings.
Statistical testing confirms a shift in behavior across legal regimes.
The sources promoting the increased incidence of reorganizational filings traceable to the law lie in cost effects, changes in eligibility requirements across chapters, differences in categories of dischargeable debt, and increased equity protection. Legal shifts in incentives change behavior, but do so substantively only when relatively large amounts of money are at stake. Pricing Behavior in an Off-Hours Computerized Market, with Mark Coppejans, 1999. Automated markets are becoming increasingly widespread, and their efficiency properties are of corresponding concern to regulators and exchange policy makers. Many systems are implemented in settings characterized by a distinct lack of liquidity, however, often by design.