Do Proprietary Algorithmic Traders Withdraw Liquidity during Market Stress?

We investigate the role of proprietary algorithmic traders in facilitating liquidity in a limit order market. Using order‐level data from the National Stock Exchange of India, we find that proprietary algorithmic traders increase limit order supply following periods of both high short‐term stock‐specific volatility and extreme stock price movement. Even following periods of high marketwide volatility, they do not decrease their supply of liquidity. We define orders from high‐frequency traders as a subclass of orders from proprietary algorithmic traders that are revised in less than three milliseconds. The behavior of high‐frequency trading mimics the behavior of its parent class. This is inconsistent with the theory that fast traders leave the market when stress situations arise, although their limit‐order‐supplying behavior becomes weaker when the increase in short‐term volatility is more informational than transitory. Agency algorithmic traders and nonalgorithmic traders behave opposite to proprietary algorithmic traders by reducing the supply of liquidity during stress situations. The presence of faster traders in the market possibly instills the fear of adverse selection in them. We document that the order imbalance of agency algorithmic traders is positively related to future short‐term returns, whereas the order imbalance of proprietary algorithmic traders is negatively related to future short‐term returns.     

Does Risk Sharing Motivate Interdealer Trading?

We use unique data from the London Stock Exchange to test whether interdealer trade facilitates inventory risk sharing among dealers. We develop a methodology that focuses on periods of extreme inventories—inventory cycles. We further distinguish between inventory cycles that are unanticipated and those that are anticipated because of worked orders. The pattern of interdealer trade during inventory cycles matches theoretical predictions for the direction of trade and the inventories of trade counterparts. We also show that London dealers receive higher trading revenues for taking larger positions.     

Does Stock Liquidity Enhance or Impede Firm Innovation?

We aim to tackle the longstanding debate on whether stock liquidity enhances or impedes firm innovation. This topic is of interest because innovation is crucial for firm‐ and national‐level competitiveness and stock liquidity can be altered by financial market regulations. Using a difference‐in‐differences approach that relies on the exogenous variation in liquidity generated by regulatory changes, we find that an increase in liquidity causes a reduction in future innovation. We identify two possible mechanisms through which liquidity impedes innovation: increased exposure to hostile takeovers and higher presence of institutional investors who do not actively gather information or monitor.     

Does gold Liquidity learn from the greenback or the equity?

This study seeks to understand and elucidate shifts of gold, dollar, and stock market liquidity, both before and after the 2008 financial crisis. The relationship among these assets is examined by allowing for nonlinear dynamics in the speed of adjustment to the equilibrium. The findings document the predictability role of liquidity proxies of dollar and equity on gold liquidity even after accounting for macroeconomic variables, suggesting that liquidity of both assets maintains an influence on gold behavior. During periods of high exchange-rate volatility between currencies, gold liquidity becomes highly affected by dollar liquidity movements through a nonlinear smooth transition framework. Yet evidence reveals that to fully understand the movements of gold and dollar it is necessary to factor in stock market liquidity as well.     

Does Auditor Industry Specialization Improve Audit Quality?

This study examines whether auditor industry specialization, measured using the auditor's within‐industry market share, improves audit quality and results in a fee premium. After matching clients of specialist and nonspecialist auditors on a number of dimensions, as well as only on industry and size, there is no evidence of differences in commonly used audit‐quality proxies between these two groups of auditors. Moreover, there is no consistent evidence of a specialist fee premium. The matched sample results are confirmed by including client fixed effects in the main models, examining a sample of clients that switched auditors, and using an alternative proxy that aims to capture the auditor's industry knowledge. The combined evidence in this study suggests that the auditor's within‐industry market share is not a reliable indicator of audit quality. Nevertheless, these findings do not imply that industry knowledge is not important for auditors, but that the methodology used in extant archival studies to examine this issue does not fully parse out the effects of auditor industry specialization from client characteristics.     

Non-linear Dependence in Stock Returns: Does Trading Frequency Matter?

The UK has a quote-driven pure dealer market structure that is very different from order driven markets such as the NYSE and Japanese markets. This paper investigates non-linear dependence in stock returns for an exhaustive sample of UK stocks for a 21 year period. The results are analysed on the basis of trading frequency. It is found that non-linear dependence is highly significant in all cases for both individual stocks and stock portfolios formed on the basis of trading frequency. The non-linear dependence is primarily over a one day interval, although statistically significant non-linear dependence exists consistently even up to five trading days. Most of the non-linear dependence is in the form of ARCH-type conditional heteroskedasticity. However, statistically significant non-linearity in addition to an EGARCH(1,1) dependence also appears to be present. This additional non-linearity is greater for individual stocks than for portfolios and greater for smaller, less-liquid portfolios. Non-linear dependence does not appear to be caused by non-stationarity in underlying economic fundamentals or by non-linearity in the conditional mean. However, low dimensional chaos is not generally supported. The limited evidence on chaotic behaviour is stronger for portfolios with long price adjustment delays across component stocks. The main results are consistent with US studies on stock indices, suggesting that the process generating non-linear dependence is not dependent on market microstructure characteristics.     

Does the Probability of Informed Trading Model Fit Empirical Data?

The probability of informed trading (PIN) is used widely as a measure of information asymmetry. Relatively little work has appeared on how well PIN models fit empirical trade data. We reveal structural limitations in PIN models by examining their marginal distributions and dependence structures represented by copulas. We develop a distribution-free test of the goodness-of-fit of PIN models. Our results indicate that estimated PIN models have generally poor fit to actual trade data. These results suggest that researchers should be cautious when PIN estimates are plugged into empirical models as explanatory variables.     

Does Global Liquidity Help to Forecast U.S. Inflation?

We construct a measure of global liquidity using the growth rates of broad money for the G7 economies. Global liquidity produces forecasts of U.S. inflation that are significantly more accurate than the forecasts based on U.S. money growth, Phillips curve, and autoregressive and moving average models. The marginal predictive power of global liquidity is strong at 3-year horizons. Results are robust to alternative measures of inflation.     

Does Participation Improve Performance? Establishing Causality with Subjective Data

Data from 121 diverse rural water projects provide strong statisticalfindings that increasing beneficiary participation directlycauses better project outcomes. Three possible econometric objectionsto these findings are addressed and answered. The subjectivenature of the data does not preclude valid, cardinal measuresof participation appropriate for statistical analysis. "Haloeffects"—changes in the measurement of one variable becauseof the observed state of another variable—do not seemto induce a strong upward bias in the measurement of participationor project performance. Reverse causation is unlikely: estimationusing instrumental variables, data on project timing, and documentationof case studies support the cause-effect relation between participationand better project performance.     

Does Economic Analysis Improve the Quality of Foreign Assistance?

The World Bank undertakes an annual expenditure of around $60million on country-specific economic analysis and advice forits member developing countries. What is the impact of thiseconomic and sector work on the quality of World Bank lending?It would be useful to know whether past analytical work hasgenerated measurable economic benefits that would justify itscontinued provision in an environment of increasingly scarceresources. This article sets out an idealized model of decisionmaking inwhich a country manager makes a broad allocation of resourcesbetween lending services and economic and sector work. Giventhat decision, the task manager for each project makes project-specificdecisions with respect to the allocation of resources betweenpreparation and supervision. The analysis indicates that economicand sector work has a significant positive impact on the qualityof World Bank loans. The results provide clear evidence of underinvestmentin economic and sector work. And the analysis shows that resourcescould be switched from preparation and supervision to economicand sector work to the benefit of both the quality of programsand level of disbursements.     

Bank Liquidity Creation and Risk‐Taking: Does Managerial Ability Matter?

This study investigates the impact of managerial ability on banks' liquidity creation and risk‐taking behavior. We find that higher ability managers create more liquidity and take more risk. During times of financial crisis, however, higher ability bank managers reduce liquidity creation as a way to de‐leverage their balance sheets. Our findings inform recent theoretical and empirical studies that investigate determinants of liquidity creation and risk by introducing managerial ability as a prominent antecedent of the banks' intermediation and risk‐transforming service. Moreover, this study has policy‐related implications, since managerial ability can be quantified as a key performance indicator for prudential supervision of banks and could help regulators to target intervention efforts more purposefully during times of crisis.     

Why Does the Interest Rate Decline Over the Day? Evidence from the Liquidity Crisis

We provide a simple model, able to explain why the overnight (ON) rate follows a downward intraday pattern, implicitly creating a positive intraday interest rate. While this normally reflects only some frictions, a liquidity crisis introduces a new component: the chance of an upward jump of the ON rate, which must be compensated by an intraday decline of the ON rate. By analyzing real time data for the e-MID interbank market, we show that the intraday rate has increased from a negligible level to a significant one after the start of the liquidity crisis in August 2007, and even more so since September 2008. The intraday rate is affected by the likelihood of a dry-up of the ON market, proxied by the 3M Euribor—Eonia swap spread. This evidence supports our model and it shows that a liquidity crisis impairs the ability of central banks to curb the market price of intraday liquidity, even by providing free daylight overdrafts. Such results have implications for the efficiency of the money market and of payment systems, as well as for the operational framework of central banks.     

Does ESG Certification Improve Price Efficiency in the Chinese Stock Market?

Asia-Pacific Financial Markets - This paper investigates the impact of ESG certification on the pricing efficiency in Chinese listed firms and examines the internal mechanism of this impact....     

Money Creation: Tax or Public Liquidity?

I revisit the example of non‐neutral anticipated monetary expansions used in Lucas (1995) Nobel Prize Lecture, within a broader definition of monetary policy tools, such as paying a nominal return on money or using open market operations, to show that money expansions increase output by reallocating consumption across heterogenous individuals and time periods. This result survives with noninterest‐bearing cash when the latter does not generate relevant distortions.     

Does Trading Volume Contain Information to Predict Stock Returns? Evidence from China's Stock Markets

This paper examines empirical contemporaneous and causal relationships between trading volume, stock returns and return volatility in China's four stock exchanges and across these markets. We find that trading volume does not Granger-cause stock market returns on each of the markets. As for the cross-market causal relationship in China's stock markets, there is evidence of a feedback relationship in returns between Shanghai A and Shenzhen B stocks, and between Shanghai B and Shenzhen B stocks. Shanghai B return helps predict the return of Shenzhen A stocks. Shanghai A volume Granger-causes return of Shenzhen B. Shenzhen B volume helps predict the return of Shanghai B stocks. This paper also investigates the causal relationship among these three variables between China's stock markets and the US stock market and between China and Hong Kong. We find that US return helps predict returns of Shanghai A and Shanghai B stocks. US and Hong Kong volumes do not Granger-cause either return or volatility in China's stock markets. In short, information contained in returns, volatility, and volume from financial markets in the US and Hong Kong has very weak predictive power for Chinese financial market variables.     

Liquidity Crunch in the Interbank Market: Is it Credit or Liquidity Risk, or Both?

The interplay between liquidity and credit risks in the interbank market is analyzed. Banks are hit by idiosyncratic random liquidity shocks. The market may also be hit by bad news at a future date, implying the insolvency of some participants and creating a lemons problem; this may end up with a gridlock of the interbank market at that date. Anticipating such possible contingency, banks currently long of liquidity ask a liquidity premium for lending beyond a short maturity, as a compensation for the risk of being short of liquidity later and being forced to liquidate some illiquid assets. When such premium gets too high, banks currently short of liquidity prefer to borrow short term. The model is able to explain some stylized facts of the 2007–2009 liquidity crunch affecting the money market at the international level: (i) high spreads between interest rates at different maturities; (ii) “flight to overnight” in traded volumes; (iii) ineffectiveness of open market operations, leading the central banks to introduce some relevant innovations into their operational framework.     

Do Criminal Sanctions Deter Insider Trading?

Many developed markets have taken what appears to be a tough stance on illegal insider trading through the use of criminal sanctions. Although criminal sanctions represent a much greater penalty than civil sanctions, the higher burden of proof required makes their enforceability weaker. This trade off between severity and enforceability makes the impact of criminal sanctions ambiguous. We empirically examine this issue by studying the deterrence of insider trading following the introduction of criminal sanctions in a developed market. Significant changes in sanction regimes are rare, especially when criminal sanctions are introduced without other changes. In February 2008, New Zealand introduced criminal sanctions for insider trading. This change of law offers a unique setting in which to examine the deterrence effect of criminalization. Using measures for the cost of trading, degree of information asymmetry, and probability of informed trading, we find that the enactment of this law led to a worsening in these measures. These findings suggest that the weaker enforceability of criminalization outweighs the associated increased severity of the penalties in New Zealand.     

Do Trading and Power Operations Mix?

The author uses the case of Constellation Energy to show the challenges, and pitfalls, of running an energy and power trading unit as a profit center within a large power company. Sophisticated trading and risk management operations do play important supporting roles in power companies that face competitive wholesale markets. The complicated dynamics of power prices and the complex operations of generation assets and supply obligations require careful assessment of risks and returns. Trading operations can help extract more value from physical assets and supply obligations. But problems are bound to arise when companies attempt to manage the trading function as a stand‐alone profit center. Determining the amount of capital required for proprietary trading portfolios and other elements of trading businesses is complicated. It is easy to underestimate the capital required and so exaggerate the profitability of trading. When profit center trading operations share a balance sheet with other business units—especially units with physical assets like generation—the natural tendency is for the trading operation to piggyback on the capital of the other units. The actual amount of capital consumed becomes apparent only in times of crisis. We have seen this mistake made repeatedly in the short history of trading operations in U.S. power companies. Only truly independent trading operations, with their own balance sheets, can be evaluated clearly and held accountable.