Abstract
This Article will make three observations about the impact of technology on securities markets and securities regulation. First, the cost of transmitting, storing and manipulating data is a very minor component of the social cost of mandatory corporate disclosure; therefore, the welfare effects of mandatory disclosure are not very sensitive to advances in IT. Second, the traditional intermediaries of securities markets, such as brokers, dealers, and exchanges, serve a variety of purposes besides matching buyers and sellers. Third, advances in IT are unlikely to eliminate informational asymmetries in the securities markets directly through the transmission of data to traders; instead, they will alleviate asymmetries indirectly by making arbitrage more effective and prices more informative.
Keywords
Electronic trading of securities