Liquidity in Asian Financial Markets: Crowding Out or Spillover Effect

Abstract

The paper attempts to explore the relationship between the stock market and the corporate bond market, with a focus on the inter-dependency of liquidity between the two markets. The study employs a panel dataset to assess the impact of stock market liquidity on the corporate bond market liquidity for top five Asian economies (ranked by GDP) for the period 2008-2017. In contrast to limited number of earlier studies that reported a spillover effect of liquidity among the markets for stock and government bonds, the results of the present study convey that an increase in stock market liquidity tends to eat up the liquidity of the corporate bonds, even after controlling for government bond yield and inflation rate changes. The findings indicate a crowding out effect instead of a spillover effect, as indicated by related studies. The ‘flight-to-quality’ argument provides one possible explanation of liquidity moving away from one market to the other. This has an implication that if regulators’ policies are focused in developing only one type of market, it may crowd out the liquidity and the development of the other market. The study suggests the government to focus more on corporate bond market, which is yet to flourish in the Asian markets as compared to its stock market counterparts. The paper is one of the few attempts that focus on the corporate bond market and its liquidity and aims to ignite a debate on the possible linkages between liquidity of corporate bond market and the stock market.