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This paper is aimed to investigate the impact of different categories of traders on price and volume durations at Euronext Paris. The two series are respectively related to the instantaneous volatility and the market liquidity; hence, they are particularly suited to test microstructure hypotheses.

A Log-autoregressive conditional duration model was adopted to include the information on the traders’ identity at the transaction level. High-frequency data were used and how the informed traders and the liquidity provider affect the arrival of market events was studied. The robustness of our results was also checked by testing different distributions and controlling for microstructure effects.

It was found that informed traders and the liquidity provider exert a dominant role in accelerating the market activity. This result depends on the state of the market, i.e. it is effective only during periods of high frequency of transactions. The estimates for price durations show that a high instantaneous volatility can be mainly ascribed to a great concentration of informed traders. Informed traders are also found to shorten volume durations by clustering small-size orders to disguise their private signal. For both durations, the liquidity provider is also found to foster the market activity, likely because of his contractual duties.

The article is of interest for researchers in the field of market microstructure, as well as for specialists in the high-frequency trading. Results provide an empirical confirmation of information models which theorize an accelerating effect for informed trading. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first contribution to study the impact of traders’categories at the transaction level and with different definitions of durations.

Resurgent interest in the life and work of the Italian Cambridge economist Piero Sraffa is leading to New Directions in Sraffa Scholarship. This chapter introduces readers to some of these developments. First and perhaps foremost is the fact that as of September 2016 Sraffa’s archival material has been uploaded onto the website of the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge University, as digital colour images; this chapter introduces readers to the history of these events. This history provides sharp relief on the extant debates over the role of the archival material in leading to the final publication of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, and readers are provided a brief sketch of these matters. The varied nature of Sraffa scholarship is demonstrated by the different aspects of Sraffa’s intellectual legacy which are developed and discussed in the various entries of our Symposium. The conclusion is reached that we are on the cusp of an exciting phase change of tremendous potential in Sraffa scholarship.