Previous studies (e.g. Benston and Hagerman, 1974, Bagehot, 1971 and Stoll, 1978) suggest that the bid-ask spread consists of three components: asymmetric information cost, inventory holding cost, and order processing cost. Other literature (e.g. Brock and Kleidon, 1992, Hef-lin et al, 2007, and McInish and Van Ness, 2002) reports that the bid-ask spread varies during a trading day following a U-shaped pattern. One explanation for this observation is that it is the result of changes in information asymmetry costs over the trading hours, assuming the other costs are fixed. However, no empirical study directly measures how information asym-metry changes over the trading day. We explore how this measure relates to the spread as well as the quote depth.<p> Our research divides a trading day into 13 half-hour trading intervals and measures in-formation asymmetry during each interval following the model developed by Madhavan and Smidt (1991) and Noronha et al (1996). Their model can directly estimate the level of infor-mation asymmetry in each interval. This enables us to observe the intraday pattern of infor-mation asymmetry directly and compare it to the patterns of the spread and the quote depth. Furthermore, we test the relationship between the spread and the information asymmetry and the relationship between the depth and the information asymmetry in a dynamic context to see how market makers manage information risk over trading hours.<p> We find that the risk of information asymmetry varies significantly during the trading day. There is a large drop over the first interval, and another large drop over the last interval, with smaller fluctuations over the remaining intervals. Moreover, we show that the spread is consistent with an L-shaped pattern as opposed to the U-shaped pattern proposed by previous studies while the depth is increasing throughout the 13 trading intervals. Furthermore, we ob-serve that the variations of the spread and the depth are respectively positively and negatively related to the intraday variations in the degree of information asymmetry across the trading intervals. In particular, a large decline in information asymmetry at the beginning of the day is associated with a large reduction in the spread, whereas a large decline in information asymmetry at the end of the day is associated with a large increase in the quote depth. This emphasises the importance of studying both measures of liquidity simultaneously.

Performance-based contracting (PBC) for roadway maintenance is relatively new among various alternative contracting options available at present and is increasingly drawing more attention from state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) and the contracting community. Because performance-based maintenance contracts extend over multiple years (typically 5-7 years) and shift performance risk to contractors, it is critical that contractors be selected based on a form of best-value method rather than on the conventional low-bid method. Currently, highway agencies use various methods for determining the best-value bid based on cost and technical scores. Five best-value bid identification methods that are already in practice by the state transportation agencies in Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, United Kingdom, and New Zealand were used as case studies for this research. These five methods were evaluated in terms of the agency’s willingness to pay for quality and the neutrality of these methods with respect to lowest bid and highest quality. To understand and describe the bid evaluation method, the agency can develop a willingness to pay (WTP) curve. This curve should represent the agency’s needs and budget, reflect their project characteristics, and accommodate associated performance risks. An Excel macro based software tool has been developed that automates these five best-value bid identification methods and also helps customize anyone of these options for any agency.

From May 28, 1996, it was the beginning of a new era of internal transportation that Muzha line of Taipei Transit works. It must affect the original urban spatial structure when the new infrastructure was brought to the city. This paper bases on bid rent theory of Alonso, and research whether the spatial structure near the 47 Taipei transit stations were affected by Taipei Transit¡¦s working or not. On the other hand, there will discuss the cluster of the firms of competition with location quotient. This paper analysis the land price within 250 meters near the transit stations from 1984 to 2004, and there are 230,070 data. The part of the cluster research of firms, this paper focuses on the registered firms around the transit stations on April 2004. The research finds as following: 1. The average land price curve next to the transit station is a bid price curve. 2. The different types of transit station have different land price curve and characters. 3. The situation of firm cluster near different types of transit station is different.

The bid-ask spread costs consist of three components, which include order processing costs, inventory-holding costs, and adverse selection costs. In this paper, we model the inventory-holding costs of the bid-ask spread by option hedging. Theinventory-holding costs are hedged by call or put option positions. Since trades deal with the adverse selection traders are unobservable. We treat it as a latent variable, and Expected-Maximization (EM) algorithm are applied to estimate the related parameters of the model. Simulation studies are performed for several different models. Empirical results of NYSE high frequency data show that the proposed model are obtain appropriate parameter estimation when the returns satisfied normality assumption.

Family or group-owned corporations and informed trading are two features of Taiwan¡¦s capital market. Is there any relationship between the two features? Can we solve this kind of problem by some mechanism of corporate governance? These issues are common concerns for participants of capital markets and government policy makers, therefore, there are many scholars devoting themselves in the related research. This study adopts the work of McInish and Wood (1992), who measure informed trading by calculating standardized bid-ask spread. Moreover, some variables, such as trading volume, risk, stock price, company size, and listing market are taken into account because the literature indicates they may affect bid-ask spread. According to the concept of voting rights and cash flow rights introduced by La Porta, Lopez-De-Silanes, Shleifer, and Vishny (2002) and the concept of fraction of cash flow rights on the voting rights introduced by Claessens, Djankov, and Lang (2000), we use the difference ratio, which is one minus the fraction of voting rights over the cash flow rights, to measure the degree of central agency problems. The corporate governance variables, such as board size, the proportion of outside directors, and institutional shareholdings are employed as moderating variables. Multiple regression models are used to test the hypotheses. According to the test results, we find that the more cash flow rights deviate from voting rights the more informed trading will be and it can be alleviated by increasing board size and hiring big CPA firms for audit purpose; while it can be worsen by adopting more outside directors and institutional shareholdings.

Using the intraday data on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE), we address the issue of the informativeness of the limit order book in the periodic call market. We find that the pre-call information variables, i.e., the market order and the radius of the order book, have significant impacts on the trade variables, i.e., trading volume, the post-call bid-ask spread, and the trader surplus. Furthermore, we are able to show that the radius, as well as the market order, contains two differential forces in impacting these trade variables.

<p>When anyone acquires control over a listed company the mandatory bid rule is triggered. This means that the person who acquires the control has to make an offer to buy the remaining shares in the company. The purpose of the rule is to protect the minority shareholders from the buyers. This rule has been considered to be burdensome and thus it is followed by an exemption rule which under some special circumstances may make the mandatory bid rule void. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze if the exemptions given by the Swedish securities council (in Swedish Aktiemarknadsnämnden) are in accordance with the purpose of the mandatory bid rule and if a review of these rules are needed.</p><p>To answer the purpose, the Swedish securities councils statements has been analyzed, to determinate if the exemptions are in accordance with the purpose of the mandatory bid rule. The result of the analysis is that the rules need to be changed because exemptions from the mandatory bid rule are given to arbitrary in Sweden.</p>

Univ., Diss.--Frankfurt, 2004.

When anyone acquires control over a listed company the mandatory bid rule is triggered. This means that the person who acquires the control has to make an offer to buy the remaining shares in the company. The purpose of the rule is to protect the minority shareholders from the buyers. This rule has been considered to be burdensome and thus it is followed by an exemption rule which under some special circumstances may make the mandatory bid rule void. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze if the exemptions given by the Swedish securities council (in Swedish Aktiemarknadsnämnden) are in accordance with the purpose of the mandatory bid rule and if a review of these rules are needed. To answer the purpose, the Swedish securities councils statements has been analyzed, to determinate if the exemptions are in accordance with the purpose of the mandatory bid rule. The result of the analysis is that the rules need to be changed because exemptions from the mandatory bid rule are given to arbitrary in Sweden.

The TMA Traffic Operations Survey was developed, which focused on traffic operations services and transportation system management practices of TMOs. The survey had the following structure: background, membership, services, and follow-up. The survey was emailed to 157 TMOs around the nation and 35 responses were received, a 22.2% response rate. Of the participating organizations only five (17%) organizations provided traffic services including traffic control improvements, signal timing, and collection of traffic data. These findings determined that a minority of organizations are involved in traffic operations. The multiple organizations that are involved in traffic operations provided data on their websites including incident alerts, live traffic views, and real-time traffic or shuttle information. Very few of the organizations that used data to provide traffic operations services generated the data themselves. The research results determined that few organizations are actively attempting to assume a role in traffic operations.