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After the previous chapter’s presentation of the system of contemporary art’s production chain, this chapter is devoted to analyzing the industry’s structure and in particular how an offer is researched and made. In this context, the chapter analyzes the main economic aspects of contemporary art markets and identify the different market segments, with the aim of measuring the turnover of the art market at a global level, broken down by intermediaries (galleries and auction houses), techniques (paintings, sculptures, video and photography) and exchanges by territorial classification. Four distinct markets are described: classic contemporary, avant-garde, alternative and junk. Finally, the chapter deals with the European trade in works of art, providing an overview of fiscal asymmetries for import and export.

Business strategy, understood as the set of choices implemented in order to achieve long-term goals [1], or as identified through SWOT Analysis [2], to which reference is so frequently made during periods of economic boom, was surpassed during the 1970s and 80s by strategic planning [3] and strategic management. The current situation of the IKEA store in Bari (Apulia, Italy) may be understood within this framework. The objective of the present study is, therefore, to identify possible reasons for the likelihood of different consumption patterns and choices by particular groups of individuals in a Primary Market Area.

To investigate whether the European Central Bank's frequent funding action can strengthen the stock market or not, the actual relationship between money supply and stock market in Europe deserves research, especially during the debt crisis. This article first presented theoretical analysis on the channels through which money supply influences stock market. The study was then verified by empirical analysis based on ADF unit root test and Johansen cointegration test. By creating cointegration model and Vector Error Correction Model and carrying on Granger causality test, further examinations revealed the interaction between money supply and stock market capitalization in the short and long term. The results suggest that stock market capitalization is conversely related to money supply in the long run, whereas money supply has positive impact on stock market capitalization in the short-term, but it's not the Granger reason of stock market capitalization. The economic significance were summarized in the last part, then the specific proposals were put forward.

What influence will the introduction of stock index futures exert on the information efficiency of stock market? The research on it will be of great theoretical and practical significance to both the investors and the managers of the financial market. This paper empirically researches the influence of the introduction of Stock Index futures on the information efficiency of the stock market in the Hong Kong capital market and the results show the introduction of stock index futures improves the information efficiency of stock market.

We apply the RMT-PCA, recently developed PCA in order to grasp temporal trends in a stock market, on the daily-close stock prices of American Stocks in NYSE for 16 years from 1994 to 2009 and show the effectiveness and consistency of this method by analyzing the whole data at once, as well as analyzing the cut data in various partitions, such as two files of 8 year length, four files of 4 year length, and eight files of 2year length. The result shows a good agreement to the actual historical trends of the markets. We also discuss on the internal consistency among the results of different time intervals.

We developed an order-driven agent-based artificial stock market to analyze the liquidity costs of market orders in the Taiwan Stock Market (TWSE). The agent-based stock market was based on the DFGIS model proposed by Daniels, Farmer, Gillemot, Iori and Smith [2]. When tested on 10 stocks and securities in the market, the model-simulated liquidity costs were higher than those of the TWSE data. We identified some possible factors that have contributed to this result: 1) the overestimated effective market order size; 2) the random market orders arrival time designed in the DFGIS model; and 3) the zero-intelligence of the artificial agents in our model. We continued improving the model so that it could be used to study liquidity costs and to devise liquidation strategies for stocks and securities traded in the Taiwan Stock Market.

The interaction of the stock market and economic activity has recently become an important topic in empirical finance as well as in macroeconomic research. The research has pursued two directions.

In our work the focus is on emergent behaviour in large groups of stock market participants. We do not assume that market participants take rational investment decisions based on full information as would be the case in established views of the capital market. Consequently, the market is not modelled top-down with mathematical equations. Instead, trading decisions and market behaviour are the result of individual participants reacting to stock price and price changes. Each participant is modelled as a fuzzy agent that behaves according to simple trading rules. The research goal we pursue is to increase our understanding of the relationship between simple, swarm-like individual trading behaviour and its macroscopic effects at the market level

We present a useful new mechanism that facilitates the atomic exchange of many large baskets of securities in a combinatorial exchange. Cryptography prevents information about the securities in the baskets from being exploited, enhancing trust. Our exchange offers institutions who wish to trade large positions a new alternative to existing methods of block trading: they can reduce transaction costs by taking advantage of other institutions' available liquidity, while third party liquidity providers guarantee execution--preserving their desired portfolio composition at all times. In our exchange, institutions submit encrypted orders which are crossed, leaving a "remainder". The exchange proves facts about the portfolio risk of this remainder to third party liquidity providers without revealing the securities in the remainder, the knowledge of which could also be exploited. The third parties learn either (depending on the setting) the portfolio risk parameters of the remainder itself, or how their own portfolio risk would change if they were to incorporate the remainder into a portfolio they submit. In one setting, these third parties submit bids on the commission, and the winner supplies necessary liquidity for the entire exchange to clear. This guaranteed clearing, coupled with external price discovery from the primary markets for the securities, sidesteps difficult combinatorial optimization problems. This latter method of proving how taking on the remainder would change risk parameters of one's own portfolio, without revealing the remainder's contents or its own risk parameters, is a useful protocol of independent interest.

[Chapter Introduction and Objectives]: A stock exchange or bourse is a corporation or a mutual organization that provides trading facilities for traders to trade stocks and other securities. The top 12 exchanges have a combined market capitalization running to trillions of dollars. Obviously, investors, corporations, and academics are interested in the design and the functioning of stock markets. In this chapter, we provide an overview of type and design of markets, and price formation and price discovery. This chapter has the following objectives: • Define market microstructure • Discuss market structure and design issues • Highlight how some of the top exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), NASDAQ, Tokyo Stock Exchange, and London Stock Exchange operate.

In the past thirty years, options have become an important financial instrument, and now they account for a substantial percentage of total trading activity. From a research perspective, a lot of research have been carried out about the theoretical computation of option prices, starting from the seminal works of Black and Scholes (1973) and Merton (1973). Several researchers also examined the issue of to which extent options interact with their underlying stocks, and in particular their possible effects on stock returns and volatility, and on the overall quality of the underlying security market.

Hungary, a former socialist country, has a thriving financial market (Budapest Stock Exchange, BSE) 15 years after the systems change. Yet, the general public's knowledge about the BSE, or about stock markets in general, is very limited and most small investors are only aware of a single investment option: the savings account. The vBroker project (funded by the Hungarian Financial Supervisory Authority) aimed at familiarizing the Hungarian public with the workings of the stock market. It consisted of a combination of three elements: an e-learning portal with material on financial markets, an intelligent training assistant agent (an intelligent chatter robot connected to a specialized knowledge base) and a multi-agent based simulated stock market, packaged as an online investment game. This paper describes the vBroker portal, gives an overview of its main modules, and discusses its embodied communicational agent and its artificial stock market in more detail.

The use of soft computing techniques such as NNs, GAs, etc. in the financial market has recently become one of the most exciting and promising application areas. In this paper, we propose a new decision support system (DSS) for dealing stocks which improves the traditional technical analysis by using GAs. Further, we also briefly touch upon our recent trial of regarding the utilization of NNs for this objective. Several computer simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed DSS.

This study investigates the effects of dividend announcements using data from the Austrian stock market. Abnormal returns are established as the difference between actual returns and predicted returns generated from time series models. We use the model of expected dividends, where expectations are based on prior dividends. Our results provide evidence that announced dividend changes convey new information to the market as stock prices move in the same direction as dividends. In addition, the speed of stock price reaction to the new information provides a test of the semistrong form of the efficient capital market hypothesis.

The Amsterdam Stock Exchange permits initial public offerings to be made in various ways. The price adjustment following the introduction is analysed and the differences between methods tested. Although one method in particular seems to produce severe underpricing and thus is a source of potential excess returns for investors, we could not find evidence that investors are able to predict which issues are likely to be underpriced. The paper concludes that the market appears to function quite efficiently even though the question why some firms should choose to underprice their shares remains unanswered.