The purpose of this paper is to compare the liquidity and the components of the bid-ask spread for thinly traded firms switching from a dealer market (Emerging Stock Market (ESM)) to an order driven market (Taiwan Stock Exchanges (TSE) or GreTai Securities Market (GTSM)). Firstly, we follow Christie and Huang’s (1994) method to measure the liquidity performance. Our finding shows that thinly traded firms could improve their liquidity by switching from a dealer market to an order driven market. Secondly, we apply Huang and Stoll’s (1997) and Lin et al.’s (1995) model to estimate the bid-ask spread components. Our results show that the adverse selection cost is significantly smaller on ESM than TSE or GTSM using both Huang and Stoll’s (1997) and Lin et al.’s (1995) model. The inventory holding cost is lower on ESM than TSE or GTSM estimated by Huang and Stoll’s (1997) model. However, the estimates of order processing cost and the probability of trade reversal do not produce consistent results by applying Huang and Stoll’s (1997) and Lin et al.’s (1995) model.

This thesis is among the first market microstructure studies of an index futures market with designated market makers in the academic literature. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate intraday patterns of key variables, the relative size of the components of the quoted bid-ask spread, and the order decisions of uninformed traders, in a continuous dealer market for index futures with market makers. Overall, our findings aim to contribute to a better understanding of the roles of market makers and public customers in price formation. Intraday patterns of financial market variables such as trade price, volume, trade size, quoted spreads, depth, and volatility separately for designated market makers and public customers are examined. The lack of relevant and appropriate data in futures markets, as evidenced by Hasbrouck (2003) and Kurov (2005), has inhibited the growth of market microstructure in futures markets. Individual orders, quotes, trader identification, and transactions from June 2003 to December 2004, for FTSEurofirst 80 and 100 index futures are used in the study. Inclusion of the parties to order execution distinguishes this data set from most other futures microstructure sources. As this thesis is the first known academic study of the extant market microstructure of the FTSEurofirst index futures, the institutional aspects of the trading process for the FTSEurofirst index futures are also explored. An alternative method for estimating three cost components as a proportion of the bid-ask spread is developed. A framework is developed for the order decision process of an uninformed trader for the first time in a futures market with market makers. The results of this thesis may have implications for other financial markets and the field of market microstructure.

This paper investigates the liquidity and the bid-ask spread components of the Taiwan Stock Exchange Capitalization Weighted Stock Index futures contracts, Taiwan Stock Exchange Electronic Sector Index futures contracts, and Taiwan Stock Exchange Banking and Insurance Sector Index futures contracts traded on the Taiwan Futures Exchange, which switched from an electronic periodic call auction market to an electronic continuous auction market on July 29th 2002. It is a rare opportunity to deeply examine the liquidity and transaction cost components of financial derivatives under different trading mechanisms. Using intraday transaction data of transaction and quotes covering from March 2002 to May 2002 for the old trading mechanism and from October 2002 to December 2002 for the new trading mechanism, liquidity measures and bid-ask spread components are examined before and after the enforcement of the electronic continuous auction mechanism. First, for each type of futures contracts, liquidity measures including bid-ask spread, trading volume, trade number, trade size, volatility, and liquidity ratio are explored to show the multifacet of liquidity. Next, the model of Lin, Sanger, and Booth (1995) is used to decompose the spreads of each product in the two periods. The empirical results show that quote spreads, effective spreads, percentage effective spreads, and dollar-weighted percentage effective spreads of the new system are all significantly lower than those measures in the old system for all of the three types of futures contracts. However, other liquidity measures do not show the same patterns. Overall, improvement of liquidity is found for futures contracts but not very consistent though. Multifacet of liquidity is showed by different measures, although two of these measures, including trade size and trade number, may not be suitable for this study. Moreover, the adverse selection is the most important component in the call auction market, which decreases in the continuous auction market. However, the change of other components, including order processing cost and order persistence, does not demonstrate the same pattern. The results indicate that the electronic continuous auction system protects uninformed traders from being hurt by informed traders. However, we also show that each type of futures contracts has its own specific component structure.