Trading in Financial Markets
Paper Session
Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM (CST)
- Chair: Eduardo Davila, Yale University
Sequential Search for Corporate Bonds
Abstract
In over-the-counter (OTC) financial markets, customers search for trades by making repeated inquiries to dealers. Yet, there is little direct empirical evidence of this sequential search process, since existing transaction data only provide information about the times customers complete their trade, but no information about the times they search for a trade. In this paper, we shed new light on customers’ sequential search process by leveraging a complete record of inquiries—successful and not—made on the leading electronic trading platform for corporate bonds. We obtain estimates of time to trade and trading costs, conditional on observable radecharacteristics and the number of previously unsuccessful inquiries. We find that after the first failed inquiry, it takes two to three days for a customer to purchase an investment-grade bond. When interpreted through the lens of a sequential search model, our estimates highlight the importance of both observed and unobserved heterogeneity across customers. Overall, these estimates can serve as useful inputs into quantitative applications of search models and guide future theoretical explorations of sources of search frictions in OTC markets.
Strategic Arbitrage in Segmented Markets
Abstract
We propose a model in which arbitrageurs act strategically in markets with entry costs. In a repeated game, arbitrageurs choose to specialize in some markets, which leads to the highest combined profits. We present evidence consistent with our theory from the options market, in which suboptimally unexercised options create arbitrage opportunities for intermediaries. Using transaction-level data, we identify the corresponding arbitrage trades. Consistent with the model, only 57% of these opportunities attract entry by arbitrageurs. Of those that do, 50% attract only one arbitrageur. Finally, our paper details how market participants circumvent a regulation devised to curtail this arbitrage strategy.C.H.I.L.E.
Abstract
We introduce an asymmetric-information framework for asset pricing with general utilities and payoffs, called a ``Continuous Heterogeneous Information Large Economy'' (CHILE), in which we model a large economy as a continuum of heterogeneous agents, with their characteristics---utility function, risk aversion, signal precision, and wealth---represented as arbitrary continuous functions. Formalizing an assumption of Kyle (1989) that captures large markets with finite total amount of information, we demonstrate that our framework amounts to the usual stochastic calculus, but with the dimension that typically represents time “transposed” to represent agents trading over one period. The resulting environment resembles what Black (1986) calls ``noise in the sense of a large number of small events.'' While our methodology is flexible enough for general probability distributions, with log-normal payoffs the CHILE equilibrium is log-linear and in closed form. In this equilibrium, we endogenize the inequality of wealth across traders by equating the pre-trade to the post-trade distribution of wealth. With CRRA utilities, such ``trade-invariant’’ distributions obey power laws. We also document a spiral between wealth inequality and price efficiency: widening inequality lowers efficiency, which in turn widens inequality even more. Policies aiming to improve efficiency must be designed carefully, because neglecting this spiral can have unanticipated effects on both inequality and efficiency.Discussant(s)
Thomas Ernst
,
University of Maryland
Dmitry Livdan
,
University of California-Berkeley
Yao Zeng
,
University of Pennsylvania
Michael Sockin
,
University of Texas-Austin
JEL Classifications
- G1 - General Financial Markets