Insider trading: regulation, securities markets, and welfare under risk neutrality

I evaluate in this paper the impact of insider trading regulation (ITR) on a securities market and on social welfare. I show that ITR has both beneficial and detrimental effects on a securities market. In terms of welfare, I show that ITR has a purely redistributive effect; that is, it generates trading gains and trading losses that cancel out at the aggregate level. However, the goods and services that could have been produced with the resources allocated to enforce such a wealth redistribution are a net social cost of restricting insider trading. Finally, although I establish two conditions under which ITR is beneficial, I argue that neither condition provides sufficient support to the imposition of such a regulation

Crime and punishment: An introductory analysis in a noncooperative framework

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it seeks to provide the unsophisticated reader with an introduction to modelling issues of crime and punishment; and, second, it seeks to introduce a noncooperative analytical framework as the basic modelling technique to analyze issues of crime and punishment. To those purposes, I introduce a simple model from which important policy recommendations follow from the noncooperative interaction between criminals and the rest of society

Insider trading: regulation, securities markets, and welfare under risk aversion

I analyze in this paper the impact of insider trading regulation (ITR) on a securities market and on social welfare. I argue below that the imposition of ITR forces a reallocation of wealth and risk that decreases social welfare. Three reasons explain this resulto First, ITR increases the volatility of securities prices, thus making the market more risky; second, it worsens the risk sharing among investors; and, third, it diverts resources from the productive sector of the economy. Further, although I formally establish conditions under which ITR makes society better off, largue that those conditions cannot be used to justify the imposition of this regulation

Insider trading: regulation, securities markets, and welfare under risk neutrality.

I evaluate in this paper the impact of insider trading regulation (ITR) on a securities market and on social welfare. I show that ITR has both beneficial and detrimental effects on a securities market. In terms of welfare, I show that ITR has a purely redistributive effect; that is, it generates trading gains and trading losses that cancel out at the aggregate level. However, the goods and services that could have been produced with the resources allocated to enforce such a wealth redistribution are a net social cost of restricting insider trading. Finally, although I establish two conditions under which ITR is beneficial, I argue that neither condition provides sufficient support to the imposition of such a regulation.Insider trading; Securities Regulation;

Crime and punishment: An introductory analysis in a noncooperative framework.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it seeks to provide the unsophisticated reader with an introduction to modelling issues of crime and punishment; and, second, it seeks to introduce a noncooperative analytical framework as the basic modelling technique to analyze issues of crime and punishment. To those purposes, I introduce a simple model from which important policy recommendations follow from the noncooperative interaction between criminals and the rest of society.Crime; Punishment; Deterrence;

Cost of equity of Internet stocks: A downside risk approach, The

Beta as a measure of risk has been under fire for many years. Although practitioners still widely use the CAPM to estimate the cost of equity of companies, they are aware of its problems and are looking for alternatives. One possible alternative is to estimate the cost of equity based on the semideviation, a well-known and intuitively plausible measure of downside risk. Complementing evidence reported elsewhere about the ability of the semideviation to explain the cross-section of returns in emerging markets and that of industries in emerging markets, this article reports results showing that the semideviation also explains the cross-section of Internet stock returns.downside risk; semideviation; asset pricing;

Insider trading: regulation, securities markets, and welfare under risk aversion.

I analyze in this paper the impact of insider trading regulation (ITR) on a securities market and on social welfare. I argue below that the imposition of ITR forces a reallocation of wealth and risk that decreases social welfare. Three reasons explain this resulto First, ITR increases the volatility of securities prices, thus making the market more risky; second, it worsens the risk sharing among investors; and, third, it diverts resources from the productive sector of the economy. Further, although I formally establish conditions under which ITR makes society better off, largue that those conditions cannot be used to justify the imposition of this regulation.Insider trading; Securities Regulation;

Mean-semivariance behavior (II): The D-CAPM

For over 30 years academics and practitioners have been debating the merits of the CAPM. One of the characteristics of this model is that it measures risk by beta, which follows from an equilibrium in which investors display mean-variance behavior. In that framework, risk is assessed by the variance of returns, a questionable and restrictive measure of risk. The semivariance of returns is a more plausible measure of risk and can be used to generate an alternative behavioral hypothesis (mean-semivariance behavior), an alternative measure of risk for diversified investors (the downside beta), and an alternative pricing model (the D-CAPM). The empirical evidence discussed in this article for the entire MSCI database of developed and emerging markets clearly supports the downside beta and the D-CAPM over beta and the CAPM.downside risk; semideviation; asset pricing;

Insider trading: regulation, risk reallocation, and welfare.

I argue in this paper that the imposition of insider trading regulations on a securities market generates not on1y a reallocation of wealth from insiders to liquidity traders, but also a reallocation of risk from the former to the latter. I further argue that, although the wealth reallocation has no impact on social welfare, under plausible assumptions, the risk reallocation imposes a cost on society.Insider trading; Securities Regulation;

The distribution of sentences in tax-related cases: evidence from spanish courts of appeals

The distribution of sentences in tax-related cases in Spain shows that the government tends to lose more often in this type of cases than in any other type of administrative cases; it also shows that such distribution varies widely across the type of taxes and other variables. Our purpose is thus twofold: First, we attempt to identify the factors that explain the result of tax-related cases; then, we use those factors to build a model to forecast the government's probability of success in this type of cases