An essential function of securities markets is to discover asset values. The function is critical for an efficient allocation of capital in the economy, as better price discovery in the stock market translates into better capital allocation decisions. For this reason, regulators and academics often see the maximisation of price discovery as an extremely important goal. Market design depends in large part on the decisions of stock exchanges and stock exchanges themselves are now for-profit firms. Their income derives from trading revenues and increasingly from the sale of information on prices. In this paper, we show that the efficiency of price discovery is, among other factors, determined by the fee charged by exchanges for price information.

What are the similarities between a defined benefit pension plan and a football team? On the face of it there may not seem to be many. After all, the football world is populated by overpaid, badly behaved, play acting prima donnas. A far cry from the sober and serious world of defined benefit pensions, where trustees devote huge amounts of their time in the interests of others, for little of no financial reward. However, Professor Andrew Clare draws some interesting analogies between the two.

Investors rebalance their portfolios as their views about expected returns and risk change.

In this study empirical measures of portfolio rebalancing were used to back out investors' views, specifically their views about the state of the economy.

Contrary to many theories of price formation, did trading activity therefore contain information that that is not entirely revealed by resulting relative price changes?

This major research report, produced by Cass for Airmic (the Association of Insurance and Risk Managers in Industry and Commerce) investigates the origins and impact of over twenty major corporate crises of the last decade.

The crises examined involved substantial, well known organisations such as Coca-Cola, Shell and BP, as well as some smaller firms. Several did not survive and most of the rest suffered severe damage.