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The aim of this study is to measure total transaction costs as well as the cost components for six German investment management firms from August 1st until October 31st 2001. The investigation is based on a unique order-level data set that includes all relevant information (e.g. time of investment decision, order-release to the broker and trade execution). For computing transaction costs we use tick by tick price data for the 75 stocks of the Euro Stoxx 50- and Stoxx 50-universe.
Volume weighted, i.e. effectively paid, one way transaction costs sum up to 66.76 bp. Market pact is the highest cost component and amounts to 27.93 bp for volume weighted averages. According to a regression analysis market impact is driven by high volatilities and bid ask spreads; market momentum induces market impact to fall, indicating mean reversion of stock prices. High free float and market activity do not influence the market impact, but lead – just as high volatilities and bid ask spreads - to a reduction in trading aggressiveness. Trading duration decreases with high volatility and diminishing bid ask spreads. Overall, the results illustrate that to some extent German investment management firms trade strategically. Nevertheless, a further reduction in market impact, and therefore an increase in investment performance, seems to be possible, if traders pay greater attention on the liquidity indicators known already at order release.
This study examines the relation between executives’ inside debt holdings and corporate tax risk. As executives’ inside debt holdings are unsecured and unfunded, they should align executives’ interests with those of outside debtholders and incentivize executives to act more conservatively toward risk. Hence, inside debt should also reduce the risk of tax avoidance activities. Consistent with this prediction, we find that executive inside debt holdings are negatively related to tax risk. Further, this relation becomes stronger at higher levels of tax risk. We also find that the relation between insider debt and tax risk is stronger for firms that are not facing liquidity constraints and among well-governed firms. The latter result implies that institutional ownership and inside debt compensation are substitutes in reducing tax risk. Overall, our results suggest that part of the observed cross-sectional difference in tax avoidance can be explained by a reduction in tax risk that is related to executive inside debt holdings.