In this paper, we model price dispersion effects in over-the-counter (OTC) markets to show that, in the presence of inventory risk for dealers and search costs for investors, traded prices may deviate from the expected market valuation of an asset. We interpret this devia- tion as a liquidity effect and develop a new liquidity measure quantifying the price dispersion in the context of the US corporate bond market. This market offers a unique opportunity tofstudy liquidity effects since, from October 2004 onwards, all OTC transactions in this marketfhave to be reported to a common database known as the Trade Reporting and CompliancefEngine (TRACE). Furthermore, market-wide average price quotes are available from MarkitGroup Limited, a financial information provider. Thus, it is possible, for the first time, to directly observe deviations between transaction prices and the expected market valuation of securities. We quantify and analyze our new liquidity measure for this market and find significant price dispersion effects that cannot be simply captured by bid-ask spreads. Wefshow that our new measure is indeed related to liquidity by regressing it on commonly-usedfliquidity proxies and find a strong relation between our proposed liquidity measure and bond characteristics, as well as trading activity variables. Furthermore, we evaluate the reliability of end-of-day marks that traders use to value their positions. Our evidence suggests that the price deviations from expected market valuations are significantly larger and more volatile than previously assumed. Overall, the results presented here improve our understanding of the drivers of liquidity and are important for many applications in OTC markets, in general. (authors' abstract)

Market makers are unique entities in a market ecosystem. Unlike other participants that have exposure (either speculative or endogenous) to potential future states of the world, market making agents either endeavor to secure a risk-free profit or to facilitate trade that would otherwise not occur. In this thesis we present a principled theoretical framework for market making along with applications of that framework to different contexts. We begin by presenting a synthesis of two concepts—automated market making from the artificial intelligence literature and risk measures from the finance literature—that were developed independently. This synthesis implies that the market making agents we develop in this thesis also correspond to better ways of measuring the riskiness of a portfolio—an important application in quantitative finance. We then present the results of the Gates Hillman Prediction Market (GHPM), a fielded large-scale test of automated market making that successfully predicted the opening date of the new computer science buildings at CMU. Ranging over 365 possible opening days, the market’s large event partition required new advances like a novel span-based elicitation interface. The GHPM uncovered some practical flaws of automated market makers; we investigate how to rectify these failures by describing several classes of market makers that are better at facilitating trade in Internet prediction markets. We then shift our focus to notions of profit, and how a market maker can trade to maximize its own account. We explore applying our work to one of the largest and most heavily-traded markets in the world by recasting market making as an algorithmic options trading strategy. Finally, we investigate optimal market makers for fielding wagers when good priors are known, as in sports betting or insurance.

Diss. Växjö : Växjö universitet, 2009.

Theoretical models suggest that ownership structure may be an important determinant of securities' market characteristics. For example, the presence of informed traders leads to greater bid-ask spreads (Copeland and Galai (1983), and Glosten and Milgrom (1985)), and strategic trading of informed and discretionary liquidity traders leads to intertemporal variation in both trading volume and trading costs (Admati and Pfleiderer (1988), and Foster and Viswanathan (1990)). However, the empirical studies on the effect of ownership structure on market characteristics are limited. Prior studies focus on either one type of market characteristics or one type of owners, and usually do not address the potential endogeneity problem between market characteristics and ownership structure. This dissertation extends existing literature with two essays on ownership and market characteristics. The first essay broadly examines the effect of ownership structure (inside ownership, institutional ownership, and individual ownership) on market characteristics such as order flow, price impact of trade, quoted spread and quoted depth. For each market characteristic examined, I establish an empirical model based on existing theories and empirical evidence. My results indicate that stocks with greater inside ownership have lower order flow, greater price impact of trade, greater quoted spread and lower quoted depth, while stocks with greater active institutional ownership and greater individual shareholders have greater order flow, smaller price impact of trade, lower spread and greater depth. These results may have implications for corporate governance. For example, while agency theory suggests managerial ownership may align interests of managers and shareholders, this essay finds that this comes with a liquidity cost. Further, my results suggest there are liquidity benefits of individual and institutional ownership. If as suggested by Amihud and Mendelson (1989), investors require a higher rate of return for illiquid stocks, firms can target their shares to specific types of investors (for example, active institutions and individuals) to improve liquidity, and reduce their cost of capital. The second essay is a specific application of the first essay and examines the effect of institutional ownership on price discovery around earnings announcements. I select earnings announcements as the event for my analysis because there are three well-documented regularities about earnings announcements. First, market participants anticipate the forthcoming earnings announcements. Second, the announcements of earnings news are usually accompanied by abnormal price changes and abnormal volume. Third, there is evidence that stock price continues to move in the direction of earnings surprise after the announcements of earnings news. Since results from the first essay suggest that institutional investors affect market characteristics such as price impact of trade and quoted spread, I expect that institutional participation would also affect the price discovery process around earnings announcements. My results indicate that institutional ownership is associated with greater anticipation of earnings news. Further, stocks with greater institutional ownership have a greater price response to announcements of earnings news. Finally, institutional investors have no significant effect on post-announcement drift. The results of the second essay suggest that institutional investors contribute to the price discovery process. / Ph. D.

On propose une perspective originale d'analyser les différents flux hautes fréquences d'information provenant des marchés financiers et fournit des modèles simples et intuitives qui reflètent étroitement la réalité. On observe les données empiriques et note certains faits stylisés et propose des modèles pour capturer ces faits. Dans le chapitre 1, on passe en revue les définitions et propriétés de base des marchés électroniques. En particulier, on revoit les travaux de microstructure et de modélisation du marché, et leurs relations à ce travail. On introduit la taille du "tick", qu'on utilise pour classifier les actifs et interpréter les différents résultats. Dans le chapitre 2, on montre empiriquement que l'impact d'une seule transaction dépend de la durée inter-transactions. En effet, lorsque le taux des échanges devient plus rapide, la variance des rendements des transactions augmente fortement et que ce comportement persiste à des échelles de temps plus grossières. On montre également que la valeur du spread augmente avec l'activité et on en déduit que les carnets d'ordres sont plus vide lorsque le taux des échanges est élevé. Dans le chapitre 3, on présente un modèle pour capturer le bruit de microstructure. Les prix des actifs sont représentés par la somme des rendements "tick" arrivant à des temps de Poisson aléatoires. Le modèle se compose d'une martingale diffusive contaminée par un bruit autocorrélé mais disparaissant aux échelles grossières. On est capable de capturer la signature de la variance et l'autocorrélation faible mais significative des rendements "tick". Dans le chapitre 4, on utilise les processus ponctuels de Hawkes pour modéliser l'arrivée aléatoire des transactions. On modélise la transformation échelle fine - échelle grossière des prix et en particulier l'effet sur les moments des rendements des prix. On propose une technique simple d'estimation non paramétrique de la structure de dépendance des processus de Hawkes dans le cas unidimensionnel et dans quelques cas particuliers multidimensionnels. On applique la méthode à des actifs de Future et trouve des noyaux de dépendance en loi de puissance.

Cette thèse contribue à trois sujets en économie de la réglementation des télécommunications. Le premier chapitre examine le débat autour de la réglementation de la neutralité des réseaux. Il étudie les conséquences d'une réglementation dans laquelle un fournisseur de contenus « indispensables » est disposé à conclure des accords d'investissement conjoint avec des fournisseurs d'accès à Internet. Le deuxième chapitre est consacré à l'investissement sur les réseaux de nouvelle génération dans un environnement réglementé et dans lequel les retours sur investissement sont incertains. Il illustre comment les contrats d'accès avec des clauses d'engagement peuvent être plus efficaces que de simples tarifs d'accès basés sur l'utilisation. Le troisième chapitre analyse l'investissement lorsque le progrès technique est endogène. Il étudie le processus dynamique d'innovation dans un marché où les n entreprises peuvent réinvestir leurs bénéfices présents pour réduire leurs coûts futurs. Il développe un jeu différentiel pour capter les effets dynamiques et décrit les conséquences de la concurrence imparfaite sur le progrès technique.

Subject matter of this thesis is the problem of informed trading on the Prague Stock Exchange. This topic is developed in two directions. First one is empirical analysis of informed trading, which makes use of unique dataset which includes trading in XETRA and SPAD. This dataset enabled the author to compare change in measures of informed trading in respective trading systems. For this comparison models PIN and VPIN are used, the latter for the first time in Czech academic research. Model PIN brings the result that the probability of informed trading has significantly decreased following the transition to XETRA. On the contrary, results of VPIN metric suggest that measure of toxic liquidity has slightly increased. Second one is economic analysis of law. On the basis of economic insight two regulatory issues are identified - the problem of inside information and conflict of interest in case of market makers. Legal analysis has brought two key findings - problem of inside information is the result of incomplete implementation of european legislature and the conflict of interest is attributed to its improper treatment, based on the concept of fiduciary duties, which are hard to enforce in this particular case. Proposal how to fix these problems suggests "chinese wall" as the solution which would...

The aim of this Master Thesis is to summarize the modern theoretical models of fundamental determination of exchange rates. The Thesis contains of Introduction, four explanatory chapters and the conclusion. The first chapter provides the definition of traditional premises (PPP, IRP, expectations) and in the end of the chapter the 5-equation model is introduced. The second chapter focuses the attention on both equilibrium (Bilson-Frenkel) and non equilibrium (Dornbusch, Frankel) monetary models. In the end of the chapter there are also briefly mentioned Hooper-Morton's and Girton-Ropers models. The third chapter brings in the risk and it is focused on portfolio models. The last chapter describes the Lyons-Evans model of market microstructure based on order flow.

[pt] O objetivo desta dissertação é investigar a existência de retornos anormais no contrato de dólar futuro de primeiro vencimento nos momentos próximos à realização dos leilões de câmbio pelo Banco Central do Brasil. Em respondendo positivamente à primeira indagação, avaliamos a persistência de tais retornos que, em última instância, descreverá o quão rápido novas informações são difundidas e incorporadas aos preços. Para isso, aplicamos os arcabouços de estudos de eventos e microestrutura do mercado de câmbio aos dados de alta frequência obtidos junto à BMEFBovespa e ao BC. A disponibilidade dos dados dos negócios permite que se utilize da variável de fluxo de ordem e, assim, se corrijam potenciais problemas relacionados a viés de variável omitida, não considerados na literatura sobre intervenções dos bancos centrais. Encontram-se retornos anormais estatisticamente positivos nos minutos que seguem à abertura de um leilão e negativos nos minutos seguintes ao fechamento do mesmo. Adicionalmente, as evidências mostram que o horário do leilão pouco afeta os resultados. / [en] The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the existence of abnormal returns in U.S. dollar futures contract maturing in the first moments near to the realization of exchange auctions by the Central Bank of Brazil. On the occasion of a positive response to the first question, we evaluated the persistence of these returns that ultimately describe how fast new information is disseminated and incorporated into prices. For this, we apply the frameworks of Event Studies and Microstructure of the exchange market to high-frequency data obtained from the BMANDFBovespa and the CB. The availability of transactions data allows the use of variable order flow and thus to correct potential problems related to omitted variable bias, not considered in the literature on Central Bank intervention. We found statistically positive abnormal returns in the minutes following the opening of an auction and negative in the minutes following the closure of the same event. Additionally, the evidence points to the direction that, among the times chosen by the monetary authority in the database, there is no statistically significant difference with respect to the effects of such events on the movements in the exchange rate on intraday basis.

O propósito dessa pesquisa é estudar a relação entre a revelação de informação corporativa e o comportamento de uma seleção de empresas com fortes políticas de revelação de informação e alto grau de capitalização do Mercado Acionário da Colômbia, para o ano 2014. Mediante esse estudo, é analisada a microestrutura utilizando informação de alta frequência e notícias corporativas publicadas na plataforma de Bloomberg Professional Services. A metodologia de análise para prover evidência da relação foi o estudo de eventos, testando a significância da diferença entre as médias e medianas pré-evento e pós-evento de alguns indicadores de liquidez, retorno e volatilidade. Os resultados permitem concluir que a disseminação de informação tem um impacto sobre a liquidez e a volatilidade do mercado. Percebe-se que no período posterior à publicação das notícias, o tamanho dos bid-ask spreads e a volatilidade do midquote diminui, os investidores negociam em média menores volumes e quantidade de operações e submetem menor quantidade de intenções de compra e venda. / The purpose of this investigation is to study the relationship between corporate disclosure and the behavior of a selection of companies, with strong disclosure policies and high market capitalization ratio of the Colombian Stock Market, for the entire year 2014. The idea of this investigation is to analyze the market microstructure using high frequency data and corporate information publicized through the Bloomberg professional services platform. The estimation technique to provide evidence of the relationship is the event study, testing the significance of the difference between the pre-event and post-event average and median of some indicators of return, liquidity and volatility. The results prove that the disemintation of information impact the market liquidity and volatility. It is noticed that in the post-event window, bid-ask spreads and volatility of the midquote decreases, traders negociate on average lower volums and number of transactions and submit fewer buy and sell order intentions.