The success of option listings

We examine unexplored factors that affect the ex-post adoption rates of newly listed stock options. We show that a variety of measures of information asymmetries concerning underlying stocks predict option adoption rates. These predictive relationships are robust after including factors that have been found to be significant in earlier literature, such as stock volatility and volume. Moreover, we report that not only do information asymmetries prior to option listings forecast a successful listing, but also that successful listings themselves end up reducing ex-post the extent of the information asymmetries affecting a stock.