The purpose of this award is to continue support for development of a user-friendly data base of stock market transactions. Considerable progress has been made to date in developing the data base for the New York and American Stock Exchanges, and two months of data has been made available at 16 test sites. This data base includes transaction prices for all security trades, not just closing trades. Transactions prices will be maintained for the most recent ten years of data. This award will allow the investigator to complete the work on the New York and American Stock Exchange transactions and will provide for the development of a similar data base for Over-The-Counter trades and quotes. These data will be made readily accessible, in a convenient format, and at a reasonable cost to scholars doing research in the area of financial economics. At present, information is not readily available to academic researchers. This project is important because it will allow scholars to explore a host of questions regarding the functions of financial markets which at present is not possible, given the high cost and access problems associated with existing data sets.
