No abstract

In the recent financial crisis we saw liquidity in the stock market drying up as a precursor to the crisis in the real economy. We show that such effects are not new; in fact, we find a strong relation between stock market liquidity and the business cycle. We also show that investors' portfolio compositions change with the business cycle and that investor participation is related to market liquidity. This suggests that systematic liquidity variation is related to a "flight to quality" during economic downturns. Overall, our results provide a new explanation for the observed commonality in liquidity.

The costs to institutional investors of trading equity are of obvious practical as well as academic interest. To date, the empirical academic literature on this topic has concentrated on data from equity trading at organized exchanges. This paper adds to the extant research by including evidence on using alternative mechanisms for facilitating equity trading, so called "crossing." We use the equity trades of one large institutional investor, the Norwegian Petroleum Fund, to investigate the costs of trading equity using such alternative trading venues. The results show that for trades that were crossed, the average implicit and explicit costs were lower than found in similar cases in the academic literature. We do, however, find that the orders that did not get crossed were special. By conducting an event study we discover the presence of "adverse selection:" The "best" stocks do not get crossed.

Using unique data, we address the issue of price formation in a limit order market. A standard volume-volatility relation is documented with the number of trades acting as the important component of volume. The main contribution of the paper is to identify strong evidence that volume, volatility, and the volume-volatility relation are negatively related to the order book slope. These results are robust to the inclusion of several liquidity measures. A significant empirical relationship between the order book slope and the coefficient of variation in earnings forecasts by financial analysts suggests that the slope is proxying for disagreement among investors. Hence, our results support models where investor heterogeneity intensifies the volume-volatility relation.

Using unique data, we address the issue of price formation in a limit order market. A standard volume-volatility relation is documented with the number of trades acting as the important component of volume. The main contribution of the paper is to identify strong evidence that volume, volatility, and the volume-volatility relation are negatively related to the order book slope. These results are robust to the inclusion of several liquidity measures. A significant empirical relationship between the order book slope and the coefficient of variation in earnings forecasts by financial analysts suggests that the slope is proxying for disagreement among investors. Hence, our results support models where investor heterogeneity intensifies the volume-volatility relation.