Insider Trading Regulation and Market Quality Tradeoffs

Antonio Mele and Francesco Sangiorgi

No 16179, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Insider trading should not be left unregulated: it should be either subject to mandatory disclosure or banned altogether. As the costs to collect and process information drop, investors render markets increasingly efficient. Insider trading would hinder this process by discouraging such activities: prohibiting it would avoid information crowding-out and make markets more efficient. When information costs are large, or uncertainty is small, such that information activities are limited to start with, these effects are small and regulating insider trading through mandatory disclosure leads to the informationally most efficient market. In times of elevated uncertainty, post-trade regulation of insider trading also acts as policy complement to ex ante corporate disclosure for the purpose of increasing market efficiency. Finally, markets are always the most liquid with a complete ban on insider trading.

Keywords: Insider trading; Post-trade transparency; Ex ante corporate disclosure; Information crowding-out (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D82 G14 G18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-05
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP16179 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:16179

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP16179

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().