Remedies To Informational Asymmetries In Stock Markets

Like many other markets, stock markets are characterised by asymmetric information. If investors cannot distinguish high-quality from low-quality securities, they will value all securities as average resulting in the well known market for lemons. This decreases the allocative efficiency and social welfare by guiding resources to the least good investment opportunities. How can high-quality listed companies communicate with stock markets to distinguish themselves from low-quality listed companies? Although proponents of mandatory disclosure rules in securities markets will answer this question with far-reaching governmental regulation, it is jumping to conclusions and skipping devices that signal the true quality of the investment opportunities to the stock market. This book analyses the functioning of stock markets, in particular the dissemination of price-sensitive information on these markets. In order to evaluate the legal rules governing the dissemination of information from an economic perspective, an operational framework is needed to assess the current disclosure regulation with respect to allocative efficiency. The book replaces vague legal goals of securities regulation, such as investors' protection, by financial economic concepts, such as market efficiency and market liquidity. To enhance allocative efficiency, the book analyses the relevancy of mandatory disclosure rules, the use of trading halts in disseminating information during the opening hours of a stock exchange, the use of selective disclosure and the regulation of insider trading.

Asymmetric information (the fact that borrowers have better information than their lenders) and its theoretical and practical evidence now forms part of the basic tool kit of every financial economist. It is a phenomenon that has major implications for a number of economic and financial issues ranging from both micro and macroeconomic level - corporate debt, investment and dividend policies, the depth and duration of business cycles, the rate of long term economic growth - to the origin of financial and international crises. Asymmetric Information in Financial Markets aims to explain this concept in an accessible way, without jargon and by reducing mathematical complexity. Using elementary algebra and statistics, graphs, and convincing real-world evidence, the author explores the foundations of the problems posed by asymmetries of information in a refreshingly accessible and intuitive way.

In credit markets, asymmetric information problems arise when borrowers have private information about their creditworthiness that is not observable by lenders. If these informational asymmetries do not negatively affect lenders' profitability, then they are irrelevant to lenders.

These two volumes collect twenty five articles and papers published within the “Governance of/through Data” research project financed by the Italian Ministry of Universities. The research project, which was promoted by Roma Tre University, as project lead, and saw the participation of professors and reseachers from Bocconi University in Milan; LUMSA University in Rome; Salento University in Lecce and Turin Polytechnic, cover multiple issues which are here presented in five sections: Algorithms and artificial intelligence; Antitrust, artificial intelligence and data; Big Data; Data governance; Data protection and privacy. DOI: 10.13134/979-12-5977-173-5

The proper functioning of the EU financial market is protected by public actors - both national and supranational - responsible for rulemaking and supervision of investment firms and other private actors. At the same time the effectiveness of the EU legal system requires vigilance from private actors such as investment firms but also their clients, invoking their rights before national authorities and courts. This means that investment firms have a dual role within the system, turning them into subjects of control and enforcement but also agents in the maintenance of the rule of law. Legal Accountability in EU Markets for Financial Instruments brings together a group of scholars with expertise from different legal disciplines but a shared interest for the EU internal market and the way it develops. It integrates a modern study of the form and function of EU rulemaking in the internal market after the financial crisis. The book includes an evaluation of core aspects of rulemaking in the financial market and that way provides a cross-cutting treatment of EU law. The focus of the book is set on the regulatory framework in MiFIDII and MiFIR and thematic questions around legal mechanisms for accountability and the role of investment firms in the operation of those mechanisms. It further discusses the implications for EU law and the EU legal system and gives readers a thorough understanding of the concept of accountability through its own findings.

The SRI phenomenon is said to be entering the mainstream of financial intermediation. From a fairly marginal practice promoted or campaigned for by NGO’s and at odds with financial practice and orthodoxy it grew into well formulated policy adopted by a wide range of investors. Academic literature on SRI has also boomed on the assumption that mainstreaming is taking place. However, little thinking has been carried out on questions specifically arising from this alleged ‘mainstreaming’. This book, addressed to those with a scholarly or practitioner’s interest in SRI, starts filling this neglected dimension. Today, one cannot ignore the difficulties of main stream financing. The financial spheres are trembling globally in one of the worst crises since the 1930’s. As a response to the crisis, the intermediation of ‘financial responsibility’ will undoubtedly be the subject of new regulation and scrutinizing. This book looks into what these turbulences will imply for SRI. In view of these circumstances, one might or even should, ask oneself whether the phenomenon was not an empty fad during the exuberant high of financial euphoria that came abruptly to an end with current financial crises. To put it rather sec: are financial intermediaries that promote ‘sustainability’ credible, while it is obvious that some developments in financial intermediation -predictably, as some say- were unsustainable? Is this an opportunity for enhancing SRI because of the strength and superiority it has developed or will it disappear due to a return to financial myopia? This book is the first to question the future of SRI in such a radical way.

Markets sometimes fail. But so do regulatory efforts to correct market failures. Sometimes regulations reach too far, condemning good activities as well as bad, and sometimes they don't reach far enough, allowing bad behavior to persist. In this highly instructive book, Thomas A. Lambert explains the pitfalls of both extremes while offering readers a manual of effective regulation, showing how the best regulation maximizes social welfare and minimizes social costs. Working like a physician, Lambert demonstrates how regulators should diagnose the underlying disease and identify its symptoms, potential remedies for it, and their side effects before selecting the regulation that offers the greatest net benefit. This book should be read by policymakers, students, and anyone else interested in understanding how the best regulations are crafted and why they work.

This book explores the pressing topic of dark trading. Following new EU legislation regulating financial markets (MiFID II and MiFIR), it traces the development of off-market securities trading (“dark trading”), analyzes economic studies of this development, and positions the resulting regulatory framework of the EU over against that of the US. The study closes with proposals for reform that provide new impetus for further academic discussion.