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The Term Auction Facility (TAF), the first auction-based liquidity initiative by the Federal Reserve during the global financial crisis, was aimed at improving conditions in the dollar money market and bringing down the significantly elevated London interbank offered rate (Libor). The effectiveness of this innovative policy tool is crucial for understanding the role of the central bank in financial stability, but academic studies disagree on the empirical evidence of the TAF effect on Libor. We show that the disagreement arises from mis-specifications of econometric models. Regressions using the daily level of the Libor-OIS spread as the dependent variable miss either the permanent or temporary TAF effect, depending on whether the dummy variable indicates the events of the TAF or the regimes before and after an TAF event. Those regressions also suffer from the unit-root problem and produce unreliable test statistics. By contrast, regressions using the daily change in the Libor-OIS spread are robust to the persistence of the TAF effect and the unit-root problem, consistently producing reliable evidence that the downward shifts of the Libor-OIS spread were associated with the TAF. The evidence indicates the efficacy of the TAF in helping the interbank market to relieve liquidity strains.

We examine the financial conditions of dealers that participated in two of the Federal Reserve's lender-of-last-resort (LOLR) facilities—the Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF) and the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF)—that provided liquidity against a range of assets during 2008–2009. Dealers with lower equity returns and greater leverage prior to borrowing from the facilities were more likely to participate in the programs, borrow more, and, in the case of the TSLF, at higher bidding rates. Dealers with less liquid collateral on their balance sheets before the facilities were introduced also tended to borrow more. The results suggest that both financial performance and balance sheet liquidity play a role in LOLR utilization.

We provide empirical evidence for the existence, magnitude, and economic cost of stigma associated with banks borrowing from the Federal Reserve's Discount Window (DW) during the 2007–2008 financial crisis. We find that banks were willing to pay a premium of around 44 basis points (bps) across funding sources (126 bps after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers) to avoid borrowing from the DW. DW stigma is economically relevant as it increased some banks' borrowing cost by 32 bps of their pre-tax return on assets (ROA) during the crisis. The implications of our results for the provision of liquidity by central banks are discussed.

Macro announcements change the equilibrium risk-free rate. We find that Treasury prices reflect part of the impact instantaneously, but intermediaries rely on their customer order flow after the announcement to discover the full impact. This customer flow informativeness is strongest when analyst macro forecasts are most dispersed. The result holds for 30-year Treasury futures trading in both electronic and open-outcry markets. We further show that intermediaries benefit from privately recognizing informed customer flow, as their own-account trading profitability correlates with customer order access. © Copyright © Michael G. Foster School of Business, University of Washington 2012.

This paper examines the relation between information transmission and cross-autocorrelations. We present a simple model, where informed trading is transmitted from large to small stocks with a lag. In equilibrium, large stock illiquidity induced by informed trading portends stronger cross-autocorrelations. Empirically, we find that the lead-lag relation increases with lagged large stock illiquidity. Further, the lead from large stock order flows to small stock returns is stronger when large stock spreads are higher. In addition, this lead-lag relation is stronger before macro announcements (when information-based trading is more likely) and weaker afterward (when information asymmetries are lower).

The rapid growth of the Credit Default Swap (CDS) market combined with increased defaults in recent years has led to increased usage of auctions when default occurs. We examine all the CDS auctions conducted to date and evaluate their efficacy by comparing auction outcomes to prices of bonds in the secondary market. The auctions appear to have served their purpose, as we see no evidence of inefficiency in the process: participation is high, open interest is low, and the prices were similar to the prices observed before and after in the bond market. We qualify our conclusions by observing that few auctions have taken place so far.

We examine implications of time-varying correlation and covariance between excess equity returns and consumption growth for the equity premium of the G7 countries. We find that the correlation and covariance are higher when there is a negative shock to labor income and a positive shock to returns. The combined effect is that the correlation and covariance are countercyclical and so is the equity premium. We test asset pricing models with time-varying consumption risk and find that the conditional price of risk is generally positive. These results survive several robustness checks. Our results highlight the importance of labor income for understanding dynamics of the equity premium.

Newly available transaction data are available for comparison of trading costs in the U.S. Treasury bond market with U.S. corporate and municipal bond markets. The mean bid-ask spread per $100 par value is estimated at 23 cents for municipal bonds, 21 cents for corporate bonds, and 8 cents for Treasury bonds. Maturity, trade size, and credit ratings are key determinants of the bid-ask spread. After controlling for credit risk, the bid-ask spread is not statistically different between corporate and Treasury markets but it is higher for municipal bonds relative to Treasuries.

Although brokers' trading is endemic in securities markets, the form of this trading differs between markets. Whereas in some securities markets, brokers may trade with their customers in the same transaction (simultaneous dual trading or SDT), in other markets, brokers are only allowed to trade after their customers in a separate transaction (consecutive dual trading or CDT). We show theoretically that informed and noise traders are worse off and brokers are better off while market depth is lower in the SDT market. Thus, given a choice, traders prefer fewer brokers in the SDT market compared to the CDT market. With free entry, however, market depth may be higher in the SDT market provided its entry cost is sufficiently low relative to the CDT market. We study order flow internalization by broker-dealers, and show that, in the free entry equilibrium, internalization hurts retail customers and market quality.

This article examines the provision of liquidity in futures markets as price volatility changes. We find that customer trading costs do not increase with volatility. However, for three of the four contracts studied, the nature of liquidity supply changes with volatility. Specifically, for relatively inactive contracts, customers as a group trade more with each other and less with market makers, on higher volatility days. By contrast, for the most active contract, trading between customers and market makers increases with volatility. We also find that market makers' income per contract decreases with volatility for one of the least active contracts in our sample, but is not significantly affected by volatility for the other contracts. These results are consistent with the idea that, for high-cost, inactive contracts, market makers react to temporary increases in volatility by raising their bid-ask spreads significantly, and customers provide increased liquidity through standing limit orders. An implication of our results is that electronic systems, where market maker participation is not required, are able to supply adequate liquidity during volatile periods. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 21:1–17, 2001

JEL Classification numbers G12, G14, G15 In contrast to most other countries, Chinese foreign class B shares trade at an average discount of about 60 percent to the prices at which domestic A shares trade. We argue that one reason for the large price discount of B shares is because foreign investors have less information on Chinese stocks than domestic investors. We develop a model, incorporating both informational asymmetry and market segmentation, and derive a relative pricing equation for A shares and B shares. We show theoretically that an A share index security, tradable by foreigners, increases the liquidity of B shares. Our empirical study of Chinese stocks supports the predictions of our model. Specifically, we show that our model-based proxies for informational asymmetry explain a significant portion of the cross-sectional variation of the B share discounts.

This paper studies the degree of impact of stock prices listed on the New York Stock Exchange and Tokyo Stock Exchange regarding price behavior in Asian stock markets. Our evidence shows that the pattern and magnitude of impact varies. Returns in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia are more sensitive than those in Taiwan, Korea and Thailand. The response patterns in the Asian markets suggest that foreign influence is significantly correlated to the degree of market openness.

I show that dual trading reduces the net order flow and market depth. Trading volume and gross (of commission fees) profits of informed traders are lower with dual trading, while trading volume and gross losses of uninformed traders are unaffected. When the broker′s commission income is independent of the customer′s trading volume, the competitive commission fee is lower with dual trading. The utility of uninformed traders (net of commission fees) increases with dual trading, while the net profits of informed traders decrease. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: G12, G13, D82.

It is shown that the models of Spiegel and Subrahmanyam (1992, Rev. Finan. Stud.5(2), 307–329) and Kyle (1985, Econometrica53, 1315–1335) are equivalent in the following sense: the equilibrium values of market depth, the expected total trading volume and the expected price level are the same in the two models. Equivalence exists whenever the uniformed traders hedge all of their endowments of risky shares. This occurs under two sets of parameter configurations. In both cases, the linear equilibrium in the hedger model always exists. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers; G12, G14, D82.

In this paper, we infer motives for trade initiation from market sidedness. We define trading as more two-sided (one-sided) if the correlation between the numbers of buyer- and seller-initiated trades increases (decreases), and assess changes in sidedness (relative to a control sample) around events that identify trade initiators. Consistent with asymmetric information, trading is more one-sided prior to merger news. Consistent with belief heterogeneity, trading is more two-sided (1) before earnings and macro announcements with greater dispersions of analyst forecasts and (2) after earnings and macro news events with larger announcement surprises. A simultaneous equation system is used to examine the co-determinacy of sidedness, the bid-ask spread, volatility, the number of trades, and the order imbalance.

This article explores cross-market liquidity dynamics by estimating a vector autoregressive model for liquidity (bid-ask spread and depth, returns, volatility, and order flow in the stock and Treasury bond markets). Innovations to stock and bond market liquidity and volatility are significantly correlated, implying that common factors drive liquidity and volatility in these markets. Volatility shocks are informative in predicting shifts in liquidity. During crisis periods, monetary expansions are associated with increased liquidity. Moreover, money flows to government bond funds forecast bond market liquidity. The results establish a link between "macro" liquidity, or money flows, and "micro" or transactions liquidity. A number of important theorems in finance rely on the ability of investors to trade any amount of a security without affecting the price. However, there exist several frictions,1 such as trading costs, short sale restrictions, and circuit breakers, that impact price formation. The influence of market imperfections on security pricing has long been recognized. Liquidity, in particular, has attracted a lot of attention from traders, regulators

This paper examines the international diversification benefits subject to portfolio constraints—in particular, constraints on short selling. We show that the international diversification benefits remain substantial for U.S. equity investors when they are prohibited from short selling in emerging markets. This result is robust to investment restrictions on nonnative individuals. It is also unaffected by the fact that the U.S. equity index portfolio is not on the efficient frontier spanned by U.S. securities. The integration of world equity markets reduces, but does not eliminate, the diversification benefits of investing in emerging markets subject to short-sale constraints.

Dual trading is the practice whereby futures floor traders execute trades both for their own and customers' accounts on the same day. We provide evidence, in the context of restrictions on dual trading, that aggregate liquidity measures, such as the average bid-ask spread, may be misleading indicators of traders' welfare in markets with multiple, heterogeneously skilled dealers. In our theoretical model, hedgers and informed customers trade through futures floor traders of different skill levels: more skilled floor traders attract more hedgers to trade. We show that customers' welfare and dual trader revenues are increasing in the skill level and, so, a restriction on dual trading is welfare-reducing for customers of dual traders with above-average skill levels. Yet, our results further show, the restriction may leave market depth unchanged if the difference in average skill levels between dual traders and pure brokers in not large. ; We empirically study two episodes of dual trading restrictions and find that dual traders were heterogeneous with respect to their personal trading skills. Further, although the average realized bid-ask spread was unchanged in both these episodes, restrictions may have hurt dual traders of above-average skills and their customers. Specifically, we find that dual traders with above-average skills may have quit brokerage and switched to trading for their own accounts following restrictions, as conjectured by Grossman (1989).