THE IMPACT OF MARKET MAKER CONCENTRATION ON ADVERSE‐SELECTION COSTS FOR NASDAQ STOCKS

We examine the impact of market maker concentration on adverse‐selection costs for NASDAQ stocks and find that more market makers results in lower costs. Furthermore, this reduction in adverse selection exceeds the overall reduction in spreads that is attributable to market maker competition. We hypothesize that order flow internalization is increasing in market makers and allows for greater information production, and is an explanation for our findings. Our results provide an explanation for the puzzle documented by previous work that finds that adverse‐selection costs for NASDAQ tend to be lower than for the New York Stock Exchange, whereas spreads tend to be higher.     

保险市场逆向选择与顺向选择共存研究

保险市场存在着逆向选择。经典逆向选择模型认为,风险高的人会购买更多的保险,但大多数实证研究表明保险市场还存在顺向选择。本文认为,逆向选择和顺向选择虽然对立,但共存于保险市场,在此基础上构建保险市场均衡模型,并进行了仿真研究。     

City goes dark: Dark trading and adverse selection in aggregate markets

We investigate the impact of dark trading on adverse selection in an aggregate market for trading UK stocks. Dark trading is linked to lower adverse selection risk and improved informational efficiency and liquidity in the aggregate market, even as liquidity declines in the lit market with dark trading. However, there is a trading value-based threshold when dark trading starts to induce adverse selection. We estimate that this threshold varies from around 9% for the most liquid stocks to 25% for the least liquid stocks. The overall average threshold for the 288 FTSE 350 stocks in our sample is 14%.     

中国寿险市场存在逆向选择吗?——来自CHARLS数据的经验证据

我国寿险市场是否存在逆向选择问题,在理论和实证两个方面缺乏细致的讨论。本文利用CHARLS数据和正相关理论检验了我国定期寿险和终身寿险市场中的逆向选择问题。我们选取了死亡率这一远期指标和健康状况这一近期指标来衡量消费者的死亡风险,从广延边际和集约边际两个方面利用正相关理论进行了深入的研究。实证结论表明,以死亡率和健康状况衡量的死亡风险与寿险消费负相关或者不相关,即我国寿险市场并不存在逆向选择问题。然后,我们讨论了模型的内生性问题,并根据年龄变量检验了结论的稳健性,实证结果表明我们的结论是稳健的。最后,本文利用双变量Probit模型设计了一个机制,并利用该机制验证了利他动机是我国寿险市场不存在逆向选择的原因之一。     

中国寿险市场存在逆向选择吗?——来自CHARLS数据的经验证据

我国寿险市场是否存在逆向选择问题,在理论和实证两个方面缺乏细致的讨论。本文利用CHARLS数据和正相关理论检验了我国定期寿险和终身寿险市场中的逆向选择问题。我们选取了死亡率这一远期指标和健康状况这一近期指标来衡量消费者的死亡风险,从广延边际和集约边际两个方面利用正相关理论进行了深入的研究。实证结论表明,以死亡率和健康状况衡量的死亡风险与寿险消费负相关或者不相关,即我国寿险市场并不存在逆向选择问题。然后,我们讨论了模型的内生性问题,并根据年龄变量检验了结论的稳健性,实证结果表明我们的结论是稳健的。最后,本文利用双变量Probit模型设计了一个机制,并利用该机制验证了利他动机是我国寿险市场不存在逆向选择的原因之一。     

Adverse selection in the used‐car market: evidence from purchase and repair patterns in the Consumer Expenditure Survey

We analyze adverse selection in the used‐car market using a new approach that considers a car as an assemblage of parts, some with symmetric information and others with asymmetric information. Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey and Consumer Reports, we examine turnover and repair patterns. We find evidence of adverse selection due to the conditions of the transmission, engine, and, during colder months, air‐conditioning; and sorting due to the conditions of the vehicle body and, during warmer months, air‐conditioning. Our quantification exercises indicate that adverse selection may have a meaningful effect on trade volume and quality in the secondhand market.     

The Asymmetric Information Problem in Taiwan's Cancer Insurance Market

This paper investigates the problem of asymmetric information in Taiwan’s cancer insurance market. Through the survey data, we find evidence of adverse selection existing in this market. Furthermore, we collect additional information on the individual, and find that the individual’s family cancer history contains additional valuable information. It can not only more accurately predict the probability of contracting cancer, as well as predict the willingness to purchase extended cancer insurance, but it can also help to mitigate the severity of adverse selection in the insurance market.     

An Examination of Adverse Selection in the Public Provision of Insurance

Using a unique data set from Florida's residual property insurer, we test for adverse selection in the public provision of homeowners’ insurance in Florida. We find a significant relationship between the losses and deductible choices of insureds in Florida's residual homeowners’ insurance market. This relationship provides strong evidence of the existence of an adverse selection problem in Florida's residual property insurance market. While this relationship is important to Florida regulators (and taxpayers) specifically, a finding of an adverse selection problem in residual markets in general has implications more broadly for government providers of insurance as an adverse selection problem in these settings will impact the public policy debates and decisions involving these markets.     

The Problem of Asymmetric Information: A Simulation of How Insurance Markets Can Be Inefficient

The concept of adverse selection is discussed in virtually all academic insurance textbooks. However, undergraduate students have rarely had the experience of purchasing insurance which may limit their ability to fully comprehend the market inefficiencies created by asymmetric information. We provide a classroom simulation of an insurance market that highlights the concept of adverse selection and its impact on the insurance industry. Participants are asked to make insurance decisions in pursuit of their own interests under different market conditions. In the absence of perfect information, participants actively observe that a socially optimal outcome does not occur.     

Testing for Asymmetric Information in the Automobile Insurance Market Under Rate Regulation

This article examines whether adverse selection or moral hazard could be induced by rate regulation, which prohibits insurance companies from considering some attributes of drivers in setting premiums. Using an individual data set from a heavily regulated automobile insurance market, we arrived at several conclusions, as follows. First, no evidence of adverse selection or moral hazard is found in general: conditional on all the variables observed by insurer, the null hypothesis of independence between risk and coverage is not rejected at reasonable levels of statistical significance. Second, this result is robust in the sense that it holds under several empirical procedures and different definitions of risk and coverage. Third, we find that unobserved variables do not induce adverse selection: the null hypothesis that consumers in risky regions are more likely to purchase insurance is tested against the alternative and rejected. Our study supports the view that the adverse selection phenomenon exists only to a very limited extent in this market.     

Redacted Disclosure

In this paper we investigate a firm's decision to redact proprietary information from its material contract filings. Information redaction results when the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) grants a firm's request to withhold information from investors in its material contract filings, presumably because the information is proprietary. We hypothesize that when firms redact information, measures of adverse selection deteriorate. That is, the redaction of proprietary information from material contracts should be associated with: a larger adverse selection component of the bid‐ask spread, reductions in market depth, and lower market turnover. In addition, we conjecture that the decision to redact depends on whether the firm plans on raising capital, the competitiveness of the firm's industry, and the performance of the firm. Overall the results of our analysis generally support our predictions. We find that when firms redact information, contemporaneous measures of the adverse selection component of the bid‐ask spread rise, and market depth and share turnover deteriorate; this suggests an increase in adverse selection. We also find firms are less likely to redact when they issue long‐term debt and are more likely to redact when they are in a competitive industry or experience losses.     

‘Hot’ Debt Markets and Capital Structure

This paper examines the motives of debt issuance during hot‐debt market periods and its impact on capital structure over the period 1970–2006. We find that perceived capital market conditions as favourable, an indication of market timing, and adverse selection costs of equity (i.e., information asymmetry) are important frictions that lead certain firms to issue more debt in hot‐ than cold‐debt market periods. Using alternative hot‐debt market issuance measures and controlling for other effects, such as structural shifts in the debt market, industry, book‐to‐market, price‐to‐earnings, size, tax rates, debt market conditions and adjustment costs based on debt credit ratings, we find that firms with high adverse selection costs issue substantially more (less) debt when market conditions are perceived as hot (cold). Moreover, the results indicate that there is a persistent hot‐debt market effect on the capital structure of debt issuers; hot‐debt market issuing firms do not actively rebalance their leverage to stay within an optimal capital structure range.     

Estimating bid-ask spread components: Specialist versus multiple market maker systems

This paper tests two competing hypotheses concerning the relationship between adverse selection costs on NASDAQ versus specialist-dominated exchanges. We reject the hypothesis that specialist-dominated exchanges have smaller adverse selection costs than exchanges with multiple market makers. We provide direct evidence on the timing differences between closing transactions and quotes as well as evidence on the extent of nontrading on the AMEX and NYSE but cannot reject the hypothesis that adverse selection costs are a function of average transaction size (which is generally larger on the AMEX and NYSE). We also provide insight into institutional differences across exchanges and the ISSM data base.     

Modeling the bid/ask spread: measuring the inventory-holding premium

The need to understand and measure the determinants of market maker bid/ask spreads is crucial in evaluating the merits of competing market structures and the fairness of market maker rents. This study develops a simple, parsimonious model for the market maker's spread that accounts for the effects of price discreteness induced by minimum tick size, order-processing costs, inventory-holding costs, adverse selection, and competition. The inventory-holding and adverse selection cost components of spread are modeled as an option with a stochastic time to expiration. This inventory-holding premium embedded in the spread represents compensation for the price risk borne by the market maker while the security is held in inventory. The premium is partitioned in such a way that the inventory-holding and adverse selection cost components, as well as the probability of an informed trade, are identified. The model is tested empirically using Nasdaq stocks in three distinct minimum tick size regimes and is shown to perform well both in an absolute sense and relative to competing specifications.     

Public information arrival: Price discovery and liquidity in electronic limit order markets

How information is translated into market prices is still an open question. This paper studies the impact of newswire messages on intraday price discovery, liquidity, and trading intensity in an electronic limit order market. We take an objective ex ante measure of the tone of a message to study the impacts of positive, negative, and neutral messages on price discovery and trading activity. As expected, we find higher adverse selection costs around the arrival of newswire messages. Negative messages are associated with higher adverse selection costs than positive or neutral messages. Liquidity increases around positive and neutral messages and decreases around negative messages. Available order book depth as well as the trading intensity increases around all news. Our results suggest that market participants possess different information gathering and processing capabilities and that negative news messages are particularly informative and induce stronger market reactions.     

保险市场逆向选择的信号传递博弈研究

在保险市场中,投保人比保险人更了解自己的风险状况,保险双方之间的这种信息不对称难以避免地会产生逆向选择问题,于是在保险人混同定价的情形下,低风险投保人要承受过高的费率而受损,高风险投保人因保险成本过低而削弱控制风险的激励,导致整个市场资源配置低效甚至因逆向选择螺旋而崩溃。通过引入信号传递机制来实现保险市场的分离定价,从...     

Explaining Insurance Policy Provisions via Adverse Selection

In this article, we show that common insurance policy provisions—namely, deductibles, coinsurance, and maximum limits–can arise as a result of adverse selection in a competitive insurance market. Research on adverse selection typically builds on the assumption that different risk types suffer the same size loss and differ only in their probability of loss. In this study, we allow the severity of the insurance loss to be random and, thus, generalize the results of Rothschild and Stiglitz [1976] and Wilson [1977]. We characterize the separating equilibrium contracts in a Rothschild-Stiglitz competitive market. By further assuming a Wilson competitive market, we show that an anticipatory equilibrium might be achieved by pooling, and we characterize the optimal pooling contract.     

Information Sharing in Credit Markets

We present a model with adverse selection where information sharing between lenders arises endogenously. Lenders' incentives to share information about borrowers are positively related to the mobility and heterogeneity of borrowers, to the size of the credit market, and to advances in information technology; such incentives are instead reduced by the fear of competition from potential entrants. In addition, information sharing increases the volume of lending when adverse selection is so severe that safe borrowers drop out of the market. These predictions are supported by international and historical evidence in the context of the consumer credit market.     

Adverse selection,brokerage coverage,and trading activity on the Tokyo Stock Exchange

Limit-order trading mechanisms, corporate ownership structure, and incentive structures in the Japanese brokerage industry differ from those in the US in several important ways. This paper exploits these differences to examine the joint and cross-sectional determinants of adverse selection costs, brokerage coverage, and trading activity for a large sample of Japanese firms traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. We find that adverse selection costs are associated with firm characteristics but not with ownership characteristics, which implies that adverse selection costs are affected by inside trading rather than inside holdings. We also find that while brokerage coverage reduces adverse selection costs, higher adverse selection costs lead more brokerage firms to enter the market because of the greater profit potential. Finally, we find that causality also runs both ways between brokerage coverage and trading volume: brokerage coverage increases trading volume and trading volume increases brokerage coverage.     

Credit Ratings and Stock Liquidity

We analyze contemporaneous and predictive relations betweencredit ratings and measures of equity market liquidity and findthat common measures of adverse selection, which reflect a portionof the uncertainty about future firm value, are larger whencredit ratings are poorer. We also show that future rating changescan be predicted using current levels of adverse selection.Collectively, our results validate widely used microstructuremeasures of adverse selection and offer new insights into thevalue of credit ratings and the specific nature of the informationthey contain.