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My dissertation contains three essays on short-selling, margin trading, and market efficiency. The first essay uses a unique exogenous event, the introduction of short selling in the Chinese stock market, to examine the direct link between idiosyncratic risk and short selling. Based on Shleifer and Vishny (1997), I hypothesize that idiosyncratic risk deters arbitrageurs with negative information from taking short positions in overvalued stocks. Consequently, the stocks with high idiosyncratic risk are more overvalued at the onset of the introduction of short sale and perform worse in the subsequent period. The second essay examines the impact of the introduction of margin trading and short selling in the Chinese stock market on market quality. The third essay examines the relationship between short selling and SEO discount under the SEC’s amendment to Rule 105. If the amendment is binding, the short-selling prior to seasoned equity offering (SEO) should correctly reflect negative information and promote price efficiency. Thus the winner’s curse problem during SEO process is reduced and the value discount of a SEO should be less

<p dir="ltr">This paper examines the informational content of insider trades and the impact of the Sarbanes Oxley Act on the ability of outside investors to use this information. I find that while the new reporting requirement speeds up the incorporation of insiders’ information into the market, there still exists an opportunity for attentive outsiders. The studies also address how the increased market efficiency has affected the differences between insiders, such as top-level executives and the rest of insiders. I find that the Sarbanes Oxley Act has greatly leveled the playing field in terms of how outsiders perceive these groups. Further, I extend the analysis of identifying opportunistic insiders. I find that using 8K corporate events in addition to quarterly earnings announcements, we are able to more efficiently label insiders as opportunistic compared to previous studies. Finally, I extend the literature on institutional investors by analyzing the link between this group and insider activity. I show that the previous findings of institutional investors following insiders is being driven by a subset of institutions, and I find evidence to support important distinguishing characteristics of institutional investors indicating institutions should not be studied as a whole, but in groups.</p>

This paper investigates the European CDS markets response to earnings announcements between the years 2011-2013. Through the use of event study methodology, we investigate if the CDS market reacts to earnings news in terms of abnormal spread changes. Furthermore, by exploring the pre- and post announcement window the study examines the efficiency of the CDS market. The results imply that earnings announcements provide valuable information to the CDS market, with statistically significant results on the 5 % and 10 % significant level for negative and positive news respectively. Additionally, the paper shows that the market has a rather symmetric reaction to negative and positive earnings news since there is no significant difference in effects. The paper further reveals that there is no significant difference in the response between different credit rating groups. In terms of market efficiency, the study cannot confirm that there is anticipation for earnings announcements. The study further shows that there is no post-earnings announcement drift in the CDS market and that the market, overall, is efficient in incorporating the information into the spreads. Finally, a cross-sectional regression analysis confirms that negative earnings surprises are linked to large announcement day reactions, while positive earnings surprises are not.

In this study, it is determined that excess returns on the OMX 30 are confirmed to rise in anticipation of monetary policy decisions made by the central banks of Sweden and The United States of America. Those findings were manifested at a greater magnitude on the first day prior to the announcements and on a statistically significant level one day prior to monetary policy decisions from the Federal Open Market Committee. Moreover, excess returns beyond the average rate were found to be substantially higher on the first and third day prior monetary policy decisions from the Swedish Central bank (Riksbanken) albeit not on a statistically significant level. The results drawn from the data in the study were reinforced by findings in similar tests conducted during times of global recession.

In many financial agent based models, the concept of adaptive switching be- havior is employed as a substitute for the, elegant yet unrealistic, assumption of rational expectations. Studies estimating these models however frequently suggest that agents do not behave adaptively. To better understand the source of this discrepancy, we propose a test for the presence of switching which does not require us to specify beforehand the exact form of the switching mecha- nism nor the strategies among which agents can choose. We verify the ability of the test to detect switching by Monte Carlo simulations and then apply it to stock prices from the New York Stock Exchange. The null hypothesis of the absence of switching is strongly rejected. Furthermore, we assess robustness of this finding by applying the test individually to various sub-sets of the data-set. The switching is prevalent in all considered sub-periods and in all groups of stocks categorized by traded volume. JEL Classification G02, G12, G14, D83, D84 Keywords Bounded Rationality, Adaptive Switching, In- tensity of Choice, Market Efficiency Author's e-mail stanek.fi@gmail.com Supervisor's e-mail jiri.kukacka@fsv.cuni.cz

Information asymmetries, proprietary knowledge that one party in a trade holds over another party, in electronic markets might cause a loss in market efficiency and market failure. Reputation mechanisms may provide a means to reduce the effects of information asymmetry and prevent possible market failure. Feedback rating systems are among potential mechanisms to develop reputations. They are often used in naturalistic environment electronic market studies. Reputation mechanisms are difficult to assess, however, in naturalistic research settings since the researcher cannot control the many variables of interest. To control the variables, this study used an experimental research setting. The setting enabled buyer and seller values to be controlled to study the impact of reputation mechanisms on market efficiency and price premiums. A theory from economics, the induced value theory, was used to modify subject preferences through the use of a reward medium. The experimental market was implemented in a classroom environment patterned on Holt's (1999) design. University students accessed a Website that enabled a fictitious market in which the students acted as buyers and sellers of a fictitious product. The product is valued with a fictitious currency which has no real-world value. This allows for values to be induced. Two market control conditions were established, a full information near 100% efficient condition, which is the `ceiling' expectation, and a fairly low efficient condition in which no seller or product grade information was available to buyers, is the `floor' or "Lemons" condition. Two treatments, `cheaptalk', where sellers can make unverifiable product claims, and `feedback', where seller identity and historical ratings are available to buyers, were tested. The impact of asymmetric information on market efficiency was evaluated, as was the impact of a feedback rating mechanism on enhancing market efficiency. Analysis of the experiment results indicate that the treatments can be ordered as: Full Information-Feedback-Cheaptalk-Lemons, with regard to the affect of information on market efficiency.

A presente pesquisa foi desenvolvida com o objetivo de avaliar a capacidade dos investidores em interpretar os dados emanados pela Contabilidade; mais especificamente, analisou sua habilidade em compreender informações relativas ao lucro. De forma complementar, buscou analisar a existência de oportunidades de obtenção de ganhos econômicos por intermédio da adoção de estratégias de investimento com base em informações relativas aos accruals. A amostra compreendeu empresas não financeiras para as quais o banco de dados Economática dispunha de informações relativas ao período de 1995 a 2010. Foram descartadas da amostra as empresas com patrimônio líquido negativo, companhias com dados faltantes (missings), bem como observações com comportamento distinto dos demais (outliers). Por conta do baixo impacto dos números contábeis no mercado de capitais brasileiro detectado por Lopes (2005) esperava-se uma baixa presença da anomalia dos accruals no mercado de capitais brasileiro. Isso porque, países em que a importância dos lucros para os preços de mercado é reduzida, a precificação de ações seria menos influenciada pela fixação funcional no lucro final reportado o que, por sua vez, provocaria interferências na anomalia dos accruals (EL MEHDI, 2011). Para avaliar se a persistência dos componentes dos accruals era significativamente inferior aos componentes de fluxos de caixa, estimou-se uma regressão com dados em painel, na qual foi possível comprovar a hipótese de que os ajustes do regime de competência exibem uma menor persistência, com um parâmetro padronizado e estatisticamente significativo na regressão estimada de 0,43, enquanto os componentes de fluxos de caixa apresentaram um parâmetro de 0,53. A falta de significância estatística entre os accruals correntes e retornos anormais futuros das companhias estudadas, bem como, da ausência de retornos anormais significativos de estratégias baseadas em accruals demonstraram que uma baixa qualidade dos lucros correntes - devido a um alto nível de accruals - não resultou em retornos anormais negativos no período posterior. As proxies relativas a adoção das normas IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) e ao nível de investimentos - incluídas no modelo de regressão - compreendem parte das contribuições deste tralho, ainda que não se tenha identificado significância estatística para tais variáveis. Isso porque, por intermédio do teste-t, foi explicitada a ocorrência de uma relação entre o nível de acrruals e o crescimento do imobilizado. Tal resultado sugere indícios de que ambas as variáveis captariam o mesmo efeito, qual seja, a atividade investimento por parte das firmas (WEI; XIE, 2007; ZACH, 2007). Os resultados coadunam com as evidências detectadas por Cupertino (2010), ampliando os indícios sobre o comportamento do mercado frente a informações emanadas pela Contabilidade em mercados emergentes, além de explicitar a ausência da denominada anomalia dos accruals no mercado de capitais brasileiro. / This research was developed to evaluate investors\' ability to interpret Accounting data, more specifically, to examine its ability to effectively understand earnings information. As a complement, we have analyzed the existence of economic opportunities to obtain abnormal returns through investment strategies based on accruals. The sample was composed by nonfinancial companies with available information in Economatica database from 1995 to 2010. We\'ve excluded firms with negative equity, missing data, as well as outliers. In countries in which profits importance to market price is lower, pricing of shares would be less influenced by the bottom line functional attachment, which in turn, would decrease the Accruals Anomaly (El MEHDI, 2011). Since Accounting numbers in Brazilian stock market have demonstrated low impact (LOPES, 2005) we previously expect a lower presence of the Accrual Anomaly. To assess whether persistence of accruals was significantly lower than cash flow component, we\'ve estimated a panel data regression, in which it was possible to prove our first hypothesis, that accrual\'s exhibit a lower persistence with a 0.43 estimated parameter, while the cash flows have presented a 0.53 parameter, both significantly different from 0 at the 0.05 level. The lack of statistical significance between current accruals and future abnormal returns among studied companies and the absence of significant abnormal returns in strategies based on accruals have demonstrated that a low quality of current earnings - due to a high level of accruals - did not result in a negative abnormal return, thereafter. Adding proxies to IFRS adoption and investment level can be considered as an additional contribution. Although these variables have shown no statically significance, we\'ve found a relationship, explicit by T-test, between accruals level and inventory growth, providing evidences that both variables would capture the same effect, namely, investments activity by firms (WEIK; XIE, 2007; ZACH, 2007). The results are consistent with Cupertino (2010) research, have increased evidences about market behavior to Accounting information in emerging markets, and explicit the absence of the Accrual Anomaly in Brazilian stock market.