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This paper investigates the relation between institutional ownership and stock liquidity, and explores whether this relation differs across institutional settings. Using a comprehensive data set across 41 countries from 2000 to 2010, we find that institutional ownership is positively correlated with stock liquidity. Importantly, the positive association between institutional ownership and stock liquidity is stronger (weaker) for firms in countries with opaque (transparent) information environments or poor (good) institutional characteristics. Our additional analysis reveals that the positive association between institutional ownership and liquidity is attributable to non-block institutional investors. 3 See Edmans (2014) for a comprehensive survey of the literature on blockholders. 4 Two studies in markets other than the US are Syamala et al. (2014) in India and Rhee and Wang (2009) in Indonesia. T. L. Dang et al. 5 See Ferreira and Matos (2008) for a detailed discussion on the FactSet/LionShares database. 6 As a robustness check, we repeat the empirical analysis using only firms with non-missing observations of institutional ownership. Our main results remain qualitatively unaffected. Institutional Ownership and Liquidity

This paper examines dividend payment behavior of the S&P1500 firms during the COVID-19 crisis characterized by the stock market crash and a V-shaped stock price recovery propelled by technology stocks. We find that the great majority of firms either maintain or increase the level of dividend payment during the crisis period. Yet, the relationship between the dividend payout and bottom-line earnings available to common shareholders is significantly negative. This relationship holds even for dividend-increasing firms whose earnings streams should be relatively higher (or increasing) compared to other firms in the sample. We also find that forecast earnings of up to one year in the future are negatively associated with the current dividend level implying that the existing payout policies are unsustainable. Interestingly, we document similar patterns for stock repurchases.

We study the effects of contagion around the global financial crisis (GFC) and the Eurozone crisis periods using German and UK returns, each paired with returns from Central and East European (CEE) stock markets that recently joined the European Union (EU). Using bivariate vector error-correction models (VECMs) estimated in GARCH(1,1), we find strong support for long-run equilibrium conditions. This finding suggests that tests of tail dependence using differenced VARs may be mis-specified when long-run equilibrium conditions apply. Past news has more persistence on current volatility in CEE markets than in the developed markets. Past volatility has more persistence in the developed markets compared to the CEE markets. The T-V symmetrized Joe-Clayton (T-V SJC) copula outperforms all other copulas in goodness-of-fit, including, the T-V Gaussian and Student t copulas. This result is supported by a differenced VAR-GARCH (1,1). For CEE and developed market returns, no more than half of our market pairs exhibit significant increases in lower tail dependence, under the T-V SJC copula. Given the number of paired comparisons, the evidence on joint extreme dependence is weak. As such, CEE stock markets experienced little contagion effects during the GFC and Eurozone crisis periods, contrary to prior results. We find that the legal environment negatively impacts financial development, perhaps causing CEE and the EU markets to be isolated.

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