Random competitive exchange: Price distributions and gains from trade

This paper studies the behavior of a competitive exchange under uncertain preferences and random indivisible endowments. We obtain explicit closed-form results for the price distribution and expected gains from trade, both for case where the market is “thin” and the number of traders is low, and for the asymptotic case where the number of traders tends to infinity. We demonstrate that increasing the number of traders reduces price variability and increases the expected gains from trade, and that increasing the variability of traders' reservation prices increases price variability as well as the expected asymptotic gains from trade.     

Number of Shareholders and Stock Prices: Evidence from Japan

Merton (1987) proposes that an increase in a firm's investor base increases the firm's value. In Japan, companies can reduce their stock's minimum trading unit—the number of shares in a round lot—which facilitates trading in the stock by small investors. We find that a reduction in the minimum trading unit greatly increases a firm's base of individual investors and its stock liquidity, and is associated with a significant increase in the stock price. Further, the stock price appreciation is positively related to an increase in the number of shareholders.     

Stock and Bond Liquidity and its Effect on Prices and Financial Policies

An asset is liquid if it can be traded at the prevailing market price quickly and at low cost. We show that in addition to risk, liquidity affects asset prices and returns. Theories of asset pricing suggest that the expected return of an asset is increasing in its risk, because risk-averse investors require compensation for bearing more risk. Because investors are also averse to the costs of illiquidity and want to be compensated for bearing them, asset returns are increasing in illiquidity. Thus, asset prices should depend on two asset characteristics: risk and liquidity. This paper surveys research on the effects of liquidity on asset prices and returns, showing that liquidity is an important factor in capital asset pricing.     

Liquidity,the Value of the Firm,and Corporate Finance*

The theory of corporate finance has been based on the idea that a company's market value is determined mainly by just two variables: the company's expected aftertax operating cash flows or earnings, and the risk associated with producing them. The authors argue that there is another important factor affecting a company's value: the liquidity of its own securities, debt as well as equity. The paper supports this argument by reviewing the large and growing body of evidence showing that differences—and, perhaps even more important, sudden changes—in liquidity can have major effects on the pricing of corporate stocks and bonds or, equivalently, on investors' required returns for holding them. The authors also suggest that the liquidity of a company's securities can be managed by corporate policies and actions. For those companies whose value is likely to be increased by having more liquid securities—which is by no means true of all companies (for example, mature firms with little need for outside equity are likely to benefit from having more concentrated ownership and hence less liquidity)—management should consider actions such as reducing leverage and substituting dividends for stock repurchases as well as measures designed to increase the effectiveness of their disclosure and investor relations program and the size of their retail investor base.     

THE LIQUIDITY ROUTE TO A LOWER COST OF CAPITAL

The managements of many public companies do not pay much attention to the liquidity of their securities. Many if not most CEOs and CFOs feel powerless to affect what goes on in financial markets, and a common attitude among top executives is that maintaining liquidity is the concern of the securities exchanges and the Securities and Exchange Commission. This approach may work for those companies whose stocks are already highly liquid—a group made up mainly of large‐cap companies, as well as a number of smaller high‐flying, high‐tech firms. But, for the vast majority of public companies—especially smaller and mid‐sized firms—this is likely to be the wrong policy. As the authors of this article demonstrated in their pioneering study (published in the Journal of Financial Economics in 1986), liquidity appears to be a major determinant of a company's cost of capital. As their theory suggests and their empirical tests confirmed, the more liquid a company's securities, the lower its cost of capital and the higher its stock price. And, as discussed in this article, academic research since then has produced a large and impressive body of evidence linking greater liquidity to higher stock prices. Although recent technological innovations such as Internet‐based trading have increased liquidity generally, not all companies appear to have benefited equally. The authors offer a number of suggestions for companies intent on increasing the liquidity of their stock. Specifically, they propose that managers do the following: (1) consider measures, such as stock splits, designed to increase their investor base by attracting small investors; (2) seek trading venues for their securities that promise to increase liquidity; and (3) take advantage of the new Internet technology to provide more and better information to investors. Moreover, for smaller companies with little or no analyst coverage, the authors offer the radical suggestion that such companies actually pay analysts to cover their stock, much as companies pay Moody's or Standard & Poors to rate their bonds. This, in the authors' view, would be a more efficient alternative to the current practice of using stock splits to encourage intermediaries to make markets in the firm's shares.