Market liquidity, asset prices, and welfare

This paper represents an equilibrium model for the demand and supply of liquidity and its impact on asset prices and welfare. We show that, when constant market presence is costly, purely idiosyncratic shocks lead to endogenous demand of liquidity and large price deviations from fundamentals. Moreover, market forces fail to lead to efficient supply of liquidity, which calls for potential policy interventions. However, we demonstrate that different policy tools can yield different efficiency consequences. For example, lowering the cost of supplying liquidity on the spot (e.g., through direct injection of liquidity or relaxation of ex post margin constraints) can decrease welfare while forcing more liquidity supply (e.g., through coordination of market participants) can improve welfare.     

Liquidity and conditional portfolio choice: A nonparametric investigation

This paper studies the relation between liquidity and optimal portfolio allocations. Given that the portfolio problem of a constant relative risk aversion investor does not have a closed-form solution, we use a nonparametric approach to estimate the optimal allocations. Using a sample of NYSE stocks from 1963–2000, we find that the optimal portfolio weight in small stocks is strongly increasing in liquidity at short daily and weekly horizons. This result is consistent for three different measures of liquidity: price impact, dollar volume, and turnover. However, liquidity does not influence the optimal portfolio choice for large stocks, nor for longer monthly investment horizons.     

Strategic trading and learning about liquidity

Many practitioners point out that the speculative profits of institutional traders are eroded by the difficulty in gauging the price impact of their trades. In this paper, we develop a model of strategic trading where speculators face such a dilemma because of incomplete information about time-varying market liquidity. Unlike the competitive market makers that they trade against, informed traders do not know the distribution of liquidity (“noise”) trades. Instead, they have to learn about liquidity from past prices and trading volume. This learning implies that strategic trades and market statistics such as informational efficiency are path-dependent on past market outcomes. Our paper also has normative implications for practitioners.     

Return Volatility and Trading Volume: An Information Flow Interpretation of Stochastic Volatility

The paper develops an empirical return volatility-trading volume model from a microstructure framework in which informational asymmetries and liquidity needs motivate trade in response to information arrivals. The resulting system modifies the so-called “Mixture of Distribution Hypothesis” (MDH). The dynamic features are governed by the information flow, modeled as a stochastic volatility process, and generalize standard ARCH specifications. Specification tests support the modified MDH representation and show that it vastly outperforms the standard MDH. The findings suggest that the model may be useful for analysis of the economic factors behind the observed volatility clustering in returns.     

市场摩擦对特质风险溢价的影响效应——基于A股主板市场的实证分析

与国外发达市场相比,我国A股主板市场的市场摩擦因素对市场微观结构和资产定价的影响更大。在防范和化解系统性风险的过程中,进一步分析市场摩擦如何作用于特质风险定价效应的问题具有重要的理论和现实意义。本文通过采用多维市场摩擦指标来代理信息不对称、交易成本、买卖限制、卖空限制、风险对冲和外部冲击,检验中国股市特质风险和预期收益率的关系,并判断出市场摩擦因素间的差异性影响机制。回归发现,市场摩擦和特质风险因子(特质波动率和特质偏度)都具有定价效应。各维度市场摩擦因素降低了股票流动性,进而增强了特质波动率的负向定价效应,部分解释了“特质波动率之谜”,但市场摩擦对特质偏度因子溢价的影响较为微弱。同时,基于特质波动率和特质偏度因子的投资策略能够产生超越CAPM、三因子和五因子模型的绝对收益,并印证了市场摩擦对特质风险因子绝对收益的影响作用。     

Does high-frequency trading actually improve market liquidity? A comparative study for selected models and measures

The increasing volume of messages sent to the exchange by algorithmic traders stimulates a fierce debate among academics and practitioners on the impacts of high-frequency trading (HFT) on capital markets. By comparing a variety of regression models that associate various measures of market liquidity with measures of high-frequency activity on the same dataset, we find that for some models the increase in high-frequency activity improves market liquidity, but for others, we get the opposite effect. We indicate that this ambiguity does not depend only on the stock market or the data period, but also on the used HFT measure: the increase of high-frequency orders leads to lower market liquidity whereas the increase in high-frequency trades improves liquidity. We hypothesize that the observed decrease in market liquidity associated with an increasing level of high-frequency orders is caused by a rise in quote volatility.     

流动性过剩的机理分析

流动性过剩是世界经济发展中出现的一个新问题。但流动性是什么,流动性过剩指的又是什么,国内外的学者们都有不同见解。既然流动性过剩一词是作为对世界经济运行状态的表述,则其合理的内核应该是一致的。只有弄清什么是流动性、什么是流动性过剩,我们才能对流动性过剩问题做更进一步的研究。本文以凯恩斯对流动性的理解为基础,构建了一个流动性过剩的理论框架,提出了流动性过剩的判断标准及其存在的前提条件,以此为流动性过剩的深入研究做一些有益的探讨。     

Measuring the multi-faceted dimension of liquidity in financial markets: A literature review

This paper provides a thorough review of the liquidity measures that are used in the empirical literature to measure liquidity. A wide range of papers have emphasized its role and the need to manage and understand this topic, which had hitherto not been deeply explored. Literature on liquidity proposes a wide set of liquidity measures and proxies intended to measure the different characteristics and dimensions that liquidity presents. Early papers analyzing the liquidity issue were based on quotation data or on end-of-month prices, given that databases with widely complete transaction information were not available. The recent availability of high frequency databases has allowed researchers not only to develop new measures but also to adapt to other markets a comprehensive set of existing measures. In this paper, we classify and describe the variety of the existing liquidity measures and proxies depending on the aspect of liquidity that one wants to address.     

Sovereign collateral as a Trojan Horse: Why do we need an LCR+

Sovereign bonds are widely used as collateral in banks’ funding and trading operations. If a sovereign becomes distressed, the collateral mechanism impairs and banks are suddenly facing significant liquidity calls. Basel III's Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) protects banks against unexpected liquidity calls, but currently excludes sovereign distress. Thus, all banks fulfilling the LCR are still exposed to a liquidity risk stemming from distressed sovereign debt and materializing through the collateral channel. Our paper shows that this unaddressed risk can translate into a system-wide liquidity shock. To gauge the potential damage caused by such a shock, we develop a model based on banks’ home sovereign exposures and a bundle of simplifying assumptions in which sovereign distress triggers bank distress. Our model describes how deteriorating sovereign collateral can lead to an overall liquidity squeeze and non-compliance with Basel III liquidity standards. As this risk is too material to be neglected, we propose an alternative version of the LCR, LCR+, which includes the liquidity impact of sovereign distress.     

Liquidity Dry-ups in equity markets

This paper examines how mutual fund investors’ demand for liquidity provision endogenously affects stock liquidity in the equity market. We find that actively managed funds in the US tend to hold less liquidity than their respective benchmarks, which leads them to rely on only a small fraction of liquid stocks when it comes to liquidity demand. Using mutual fund sell transactions, we further show that mutual funds tend to sell more liquid stocks in their holdings when experiencing outflows. Concentrated sales of liquid stocks, however, significantly reduce the liquidity of these stocks, resulting in liquidity deterioration or dry-up among highly liquid stocks in periods of high market-wide liquidity demand. Overall, the results indicate that mutual funds fail to predict the liquidity of the asset at purchase.     

Liquidity provider incentives in fragmented securities markets

We test theoretical predictions of changes in make/take fees in a setting with isolated make rebates for liquidity providers on a single trading venue (Xetra) by examining the impact on both Xetra and the overall market. The rebates lead to higher quoted depth but do not change bid–ask spreads or trading volume on Xetra. For the overall market, no change in trading volume or liquidity is observable. This shows that market participants redistribute their orders to the venue offering fee rebates rather than providing additional liquidity to the overall market. Consequently, the impact of fee changes depends on the setting.     

Bank liquidity,stock market participation,and economic growth

We develop a growth model with banks and markets to reconcile the observed decreasing trend in the relative liquidity of many financial systems around the world with the increasing household participation in direct market trades. At low levels of economic development, the presence of fixed entry costs prevents the agents from accessing the market, and pushes them towards the banks, which provide high relative liquidity. We characterize the threshold after which the agents are rich enough to access the market, where the relative liquidity is lower, and show that the relative liquidity of the whole financial system (banks and markets) drops because of the increasing market participation. We provide some evidence consistent with this theoretical prediction: a one-unit increase in an index of securities market liberalization leads to a drop in the relative liquidity of between 17 and 27 per cent.     

The impact of short-selling and margin-buying on liquidity: Evidence from the Chinese stock market

We propose a framework based on limit order book to analyze the impact of short-selling and margin-buying on liquidity. We show that when short-sellers are perceived as informed, adverse selection may lead to uninformed traders withdrawing their limit orders. Given that the Chinese stock market has strong information asymmetry and a high proportion of uninformed traders, we predict that the pilot program launched in March 2010, which lifts restrictions on short-selling and margin-buying for a designated list of stocks, may have a negative impact on liquidity. We perform difference-in-differences tests and show evidence that allowing for short-selling and margin-buying indeed has a significantly negative impact on liquidity for stocks on the designated list. In particular, the negative impact on liquidity is more pronounced for stocks with high information asymmetry. Nevertheless, when short-selling volume dries up due to regulation changes in August 2015, i.e., the “T+1” trading rule on short-selling, we show that consistent with model predictions, lifting restrictions on short-selling and margin-buying has a positive effect on liquidity.     

Liquidity commonality and the intervalling effect

Past studies of liquidity commonality have reported conflicting findings regarding the relationship between market liquidity and firm size. The present paper provides empirical evidence that underlying estimation problems might be responsible for these results. We develop a model of information and spreads that provides some insights into the firm size–liquidity relationship. Our empirical evidence confirms the main testable implications of the model and presents evidence that the presence and strength of common covariability in liquidity depends upon the interval over which liquidity movements are measured. These intervalling effects are caused by delays in information being incorporated into bid and ask spreads.     

Liquidity risk and policy options

On the basis of a liquidity management model, liquidity risks, defined as the probability of payment failures in a real-time gross settlement (RTGS) payment system, may either stem from liquidity management inefficiencies or insufficient cash balances. I will show that penalties charged on the amount of payment failures minimise liquidity risks without interfering with the bank’s technology preferences. I will instead show that liquidity requirements, although as effective as penalties to contain the risk of liquidity shortage, may distort the bank’s technology preferences and cannot stem liquidity management inefficiencies. I will also show that liquidity risks within RTGS payment systems are potentially smaller because they depend more on the liquidity management efficiency than on the randomness of cash inflows and outflows.     

流动性、银行间市场摩擦与借贷便利类货币政策工具

通过内生引入流动性短缺银行(拆入行)对流动性盈余银行(拆出行)的流动性需求机制,本文构建了一个包含银行间市场的DSGE模型,对借贷便利类货币政策工具的传导机制和传导效果进行了理论和实证研究。研究表明:(1)负向冲击会同时增加拆入行和拆出行对流动性的预防性需求,在经济形势不确定的情形下,拆出行不会很快恢复对拆入行的流动性供给,引起银行间市场流动性缺口放大和市场失灵。(2)由于仅依赖银行间市场自发回归稳态的过程太过缓慢,需要央行进行流动性干预。借贷便利类工具可以通过引导贷款市场定价和流动性效应这两个渠道来影响银行融资可得性,进而降低银行间市场流动性风险对宏观经济的负面影响。(3)借贷便利类货币政策工具的影响效果边际递减,央行可根据借贷便利操作的收益和成本,制定最佳的反应程度参数。     

流动性、银行间市场摩擦与借贷便利类货币政策工具

通过内生引入流动性短缺银行(拆入行)对流动性盈余银行(拆出行)的流动性需求机制,本文构建了一个包含银行间市场的DSGE模型,对借贷便利类货币政策工具的传导机制和传导效果进行了理论和实证研究。研究表明:(1)负向冲击会同时增加拆入行和拆出行对流动性的预防性需求,在经济形势不确定的情形下,拆出行不会很快恢复对拆入行的流动性供给,引起银行间市场流动性缺口放大和市场失灵。(2)由于仅依赖银行间市场自发回归稳态的过程太过缓慢,需要央行进行流动性干预。借贷便利类工具可以通过引导贷款市场定价和流动性效应这两个渠道来影响银行融资可得性,进而降低银行间市场流动性风险对宏观经济的负面影响。(3)借贷便利类货币政策工具的影响效果边际递减,央行可根据借贷便利操作的收益和成本,制定最佳的反应程度参数。     

Liquidity,assets and business cycles

The objective here is to evaluate the quantitative importance of financial frictions in business cycles. The analysis shows that a negative financial shock can cause aggregate investment, employment and consumption to fall with output. Despite this realistic comovement among macro quantities, a negative financial shock generates an equity price boom as the shock tightens firms׳ financing constraint. This counterfactual response of the equity price is robust to a wide range of variations in how financial frictions are modeled and whether financial shocks affect asset liquidity or firms׳ collateral constraints. Some possible resolutions to this puzzle are discussed.     

Share buybacks in India

We examine the market price and liquidity reaction to 239 share repurchase announcements in India. The average abnormal return on announcement day is 2.07 percent. Firms with larger promotor ownership stakes experience higher market reactions. Using the Amihud illiquidity measure and volume, we show that liquidity improves after the announcement. Open market repurchase programs increase market liquidity while tender offers do not. Liquidity improves more for high promotor ownership firms. Lastly, shorter duration repurchase programs improve liquidity more than longer duration programs. These results are consistent with our discussion of the pecking order of ownership structure in the low information transparency environment of India.     

Do sovereign credit default swaps represent a clean measure of sovereign default risk? A factor model approach

In this study, we use a factor model in order to decompose sovereign Credit Default Swaps (CDS) spreads into default, liquidity, systematic liquidity and correlation components. By calibrating the model to sovereign CDSs and bonds we are able to present a better decomposition and a more accurate measure of spread components. Our analysis reveals that sovereign CDS spreads are highly driven by liquidity (55.6% of default risk and 44.32% of liquidity) and that sovereign bond spreads are less subject to liquidity frictions and therefore could represent a better proxy for sovereign default risk (73% of default risk and 26.86% of liquidity). Furthermore, our model enables us to directly study the effect of systematic liquidity and flight-to-liquidity risks on bond and CDS spreads through the factor sensitivity matrix. We find that these risks do have an influence on the default intensity and they contribute significantly to spread movements. Finally, our empirical results advance the idea that the increase in the CDS spreads observed during the crisis period was mainly due to a surge in liquidity rather than to an increase in the default intensity.