No abstract

A Sunday New York Times article on a potential development of new cancer-curing drugs caused EntreMed's stock price to rise from 12.063 at the Friday close, to open at 85 and close near 52 on Monday. It closed above 30 in the three following weeks. The enthusiasm spilled over to other biotechnology stocks. The potential breakthrough in cancer research already had been reported, however, in the journal Nature, and in various popular newspapers~including the Times! more than five months earlier. Thus, enthusiastic public attention induced a permanent rise in share prices, even though no genuinely new information had been presented.

The wide range of 401(k) plans offered to employees has raised the question of whether there is such as thing as too much choice. The 401(k) participation rates among clients of the Vanguard Group were studied to verify the assumption that more choice is more desirable and intrinsically motivating. It was found that 401(k) plans that offered more funds had lower probability of employee participation.

Most ofthe market microstructure literature focuses on the liquidity of individual securities, whereas much of the asset pricing literature examines the association between systematic risk and return. We document the presence of a systematic, time-varying component of liquidity. At the moment, neither the inventory nor the asymmetric information-based approach to liquidity explains the systematic, time-varying component of liquidity.