This article empirically examines the relationship between order sizes and spreads in the foreign exchange market based on a FX dealer’s quotes. It is found that spreads are independent of order sizes in the inter-dealer market, but they are negatively correlated in the customer market. JEL classification: F31; G14

To understand whether and how pre-trade transparency would affect over-the-counter markets, we construct a search model and test our model implications in corporate bond markets. Based on our search model, we argue that the increase in pre-trade information, which refines traders’ information sets, enhances traders’ bargaining positions relative to dealers’. Thus, traders’ transaction costs mea...

We study the problem of a market-maker acting as a liquidity provider by continuously setting bid and ask prices for an illiquid asset. We assume that the market maker has a contractual obligation to permanently quote bid and ask prices for the security and therefore to satisfy any sell or buy order from the asset’s investors. On the opposite side of the trades, there are investors who act as l...

When thinly traded growth stocks (TTGS) listed on a secondary exchange experience difficulty in gaining investors’ attention, one possible solution is to increase the intensity of disclosure. However, if the stock is traded on a quote-driven system, market makers can collude to maintain wide bid-ask spreads that discourage firms from disclosing. As a result, TTGS traded on a quote-driven system...

Article history: Received 12 January 2007 Accepted 9 November 2008 Available online 24 November 2008 Based on a questionnaire surveying dealers in the Taipei inter-bank foreign exchange market that was conducted in March 2001, I attempted to answer the question of who initiated the wider currency spread. It was found that the risk-averse dealers of small banks quoted wider spreads in order to c...

Estimating trading costs in the absence of recorded data is a problem that continues to puzzle financial market researchers. We address this challenge by introducing two low frequency bid-ask spread estimators using daily high and low transaction prices. The range of mid-prices is an increasing function of the sampling interval, while the bid-ask spread and the relationship between trading dire...

The bid–ask spread is taken as an important measure of the financial market liquidity. In this article, we study the dynamics of the spread return and the spread volatility of four liquid stocks in the Chinese stock market, including the memory effect and the multifractal nature. By investigating the autocorrelation function and the Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA), we find that the spread ...

This paper investigates the nature and behavior of the domestic (local) currency market that existed in Florence (Italy) during the late 14th and early 15th centuries (a.k.a. the Early Renaissance). We find that the extant volatility and microstructure models developed for modern asset markets are able to describe the statistical volatility properties observed for the denaro-florin exchange rat...

Prior studies that examine the relation between market depth and bid–ask spread are often limited to first level of limit order book. However, full book provides important information beyond about spread, which affects trading decisions participants. This paper examines intraday behavior in five-deep a futures setting. A dummy-variables regression framework is employed estimated using generaliz...