Search results

Prior studies find increased bid‐ask spread around earnings announcements of U.S. firms. These findings show that increased adverse selection cost is the dominant factor affecting bid‐ask spread. Using a sample of foreign firms that are cross‐listed on Nasdaq as American Depositary Receipts, we find that there is significant decrease in bid‐ask spread around earnings announcements of these foreign firms. The results suggest that increased trading volume is the dominant factor affecting the bid‐ask spread of American Depositary Receipts around earnings announcements.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relation between a company's bid‐ask spread, a proxy for information asymmetry, and auditor tenure and specialization.

The tests use clustered regression for a sample of 31,689 company‐years from 1992 to 2001 and control for factors known to impact bid‐ask spread in cross‐section.

The findings suggest that the market's perception of disclosure quality is higher and private information search opportunities are fewer for companies engaging industry specialist auditors. In addition, the paper finds that information asymmetry has a U‐shaped relation to auditor tenure. This U‐shaped relation holds for both specialists and non‐specialists; however, the bid‐ask spread for specialists tends to fall below that of non‐specialists at all tenure intervals.

The findings may directly result from auditor tenure and specialization or it may be that those auditor‐related characteristics are a subset of concurrent choices made by the company that impacts disclosure quality.

Companies have incentives to lower information asymmetry and the findings document that the choice of a specialist auditor and the length of the auditor relationship can potentially influence this objective.

The paper provides information to academics, regulators, companies, and auditors concerning the effect of auditor‐client relationships on the level of information asymmetry. In addition, it shows the importance of industry specialization and audit firm tenure on audit quality.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the components of the bid‐ask spread around earnings announcements on the London Stock Exchange using intraday data obtained from the ICV Marketeye database. The paper finds that the information asymmetry cost component significantly increases around the earnings announcements, while the inventory holding and order processing cost components significantly decrease around the same period. Specifically, the economic magnitude of the increase in the asymmetric cost component implies that earnings announcements significantly increase the total bid‐ask spread, even when they result in decreased inventory holding and order processing costs.

Liquidity in financial markets around earnings announcements in the London Stock Exchange obtained by bid‐ask spread decompositions.

This paper investigates the impact of earnings announcements on the components of the bid‐ask spread on the London Stock Exchange using intraday data. The fundamental conclusion from the empirical findings is that the bid‐ask spread increases once the earnings have been announced, because the market makers' increased concerns about asymmetric information is more pronounced, than the lower inventory and order processing costs due to the higher levels of trading volume. This empirical finding also holds when the earnings announcements are partitioned into positive and negative surprises.

This is the first paper to decompose the bid‐ask spread around earnings announcements on the London Stock Exchange. The paper uses a unique intraday dataset.

This study empirically examines the relationship between the effective bid‐ask spread on foreign currency options traded on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange and the likelihood of a transaction occurring. Important contributions of this research include the use of a more precise measure of the effective bid‐ask spread than generally used in the literature and the use of data on actual transactions, plus several requests for quotes that did not culminate in a transaction. Consistent with prior theoretical work in the market micro structure literature, the results document empirical evidence that the likelihood of a transaction is inversely proportional to the effective bid‐ask spread.

This paper aims to investigate the extent to which different prices within the bid-ask spread are used for fair value measurements and evaluate the potential consequences thereof.

The paper investigates different Level 1 fair value measurements of exchange-traded funds’ (ETFs) equity investments. Using descriptive methods, it compares actual and stated fair value measurement policies. In addition, comparative value relevance of these measurements is investigated in regression analysis.

Most fair value measurements are based on closing prices, but stated accounting policies and actual measurements frequently differ. Results also show that the bid-close spread of underlying investments is value-relevant in determining the bid-close spreads of ETFs themselves.

Findings are specific to unleveraged ETFs, the sample country and sample period used and only apply to investments in listed equities. Conclusions from this study may assist in predicting market perceptions of the risk of listed equity portfolios.

This paper sheds light on the practical impact of the recent change in fair value measurement guidance.

This study provides evidence on the size of the bid-ask spread of actual investment portfolios and its potential impact. It shows that bid-close spreads of underlying investments are used to price the bid-close spreads of ETFs themselves and that stated and actual accounting policies often differ. Findings imply that standard-setters might be influenced by actual accounting practices.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how quotes originating via electronic communication networks (ECN)s affect trading costs.

In order to investigate the relations between trading costs and quotation venue, the bid‐ask spread is decomposed into its theoretical cost components associated with adverse selection, inventory handling, and order processing.

Stoll's adverse selection costs of ECN‐originated quotes relate positively to effective spreads, while Lin et al.'s adverse selection costs relate negatively to effective spreads.

The paper shows how trading costs relate to trading venue choice by decomposing the bid‐ask spread.

This study analyzes the relationship between governance and stock liquidity. It uses different variables of corporate board characteristics and test three proxies of a bid-ask spread. It also provides comprehensive and robust evidence for the association between the corporate board and stock liquidity in the pure order-driven Tunisian market.

This study is based on a sample covering all financial firms in Tunisia (banks, insurances and leasing companies) from 2008 to 2019. It employs a panel data approach.

The author finds a negative relationship between board sizes, financial institutional members in corporate board and bid-ask spread (absolute, relative and effective spread). The author suggests that better-managed firms have greatly improved their stock liquidity and lower trading cost. The empirical results reveal that better corporate governance firms improve stock liquidity since it is associated with higher information disclosure.

This research encourages Tunisian firms to develop their governance mechanisms and restructure their board organization to improve stock liquidity. It can support the regulators to simultaneously design appropriate governance recommendations, disclosure policies and trading regulations.

The author presents empirical evidence of the role of corporate board on the bid-ask spread in an emerging market. The research is the first to analyze the corporate board characteristics using seven variables representatives of the board of directors and without using the governance index.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether focused attention on a firm by an external organization, group, or influential analyst generates greater investor awareness that can affect a firm's value and cost of capital. This study is motivated by contemporary research that provides support for the hypothesis that investors have limited attention. Prior studies have focused on how investors' limited attention has influenced their analysis of firm‐specific financial data. The studies have shown that investors may have limited attention and hence pay more attention to the more salient financial statement items. This paper extends this stream of research by empirically testing to determine if external sources attract investors' limited attention to a firm.

The paper examines the published monthly Center for Financial Research and Analysis (CFRA) research reports from 1998 through 2004 that identify firms experiencing operational problems and/or using unusual or aggressive accounting practices. To provide evidence that information appearing in CFRA research reports has not already been impounded into a firm's stock price prior to the publication of the CFRA research report, the paper tests for abnormal returns around the publication of the CFRA research reports. Second, to provide evidence that the firms' cost of capital decreases after the publication date of the CFRA research reports, the paper tests for a decrease in the bid‐ask spreads after firms appear on the CFRA research reports.

Support was found for the hypothesis that firms experience a significant decline in their market value in the days surrounding their appearance on the CFRA research reports. For a sample of 892 firms, the cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) for a two‐day window around a firm's appearance on a CFRA research report is −1.89 percent, and the CARs for a seven‐day window around a firm's appearance on a CFRA research report is −3.50 percent.

The paper's findings suggest that the information from the fundamental analysis conducted by the Center for Financial Research and Analysis has not already been impounded into a firm's stock price before its appearance on a CFRA research report. Although the paper found a decrease in the mean difference in the bid‐ask spread change, it cannot provide statistically significant support for the hypothesis that a firm's cost of capital decreases after appearing on a CFRA research report.

This chapter investigates the determinants of the volatility of spread in the over-the-counter foreign exchange market and examines whether the relationships differ in the crisis periods. We compute the measures for the volatility of liquidity by using bid-ask spread data sampled at a high frequency of five minutes. By examining 11 currencies over a 13-year sample period, we utilize a balanced dynamic panel regression to investigate whether the risk associated with the currencies quoted or trading activity affects the variability of liquidity provision in the FX market and examine whether the crisis periods have any effect. We find that both the level of spread and volatility of spread increases during the crisis periods for the currencies of emerging countries. In addition, we find increases in risks associated with the currencies proxied by realized volatility during the crisis periods. We also show risks associated with the currency are the major determinants of the variability of liquidity and that these relationships strengthen during periods of uncertainty. First, we develop measures to capture the variability of liquidity. Our measures to capture the variability of liquidity are non-parametric and model-free variable. Second, we contribute to the debate of whether variability of liquidity is adverse to market participants by examining what drives the variability of liquidity. Finally, we analyze seven crisis periods, allowing us to document the effect of the crises on determinants of variability of liquidity over time.

In this chapter, we examine whether corporate environmental reporting (CER) by listed companies in Kenya improves stock liquidity. The investigation is motivated by the growing interest by corporations, investors, and regulators toward embracing ecological protection with a view to creating sustainable societies for the future.

Using a panel dataset comprising of 244 firm-year observations from 50 listed firms in Kenya over a five-year period (2011 to 2015), we perform fixed-effects regressions to discern whether CER is associated with stock liquidity. To examine this, we utilize bid-ask (as well as quoted) spreads measured over month −9 to month +3 relative to a firm’s year end.

Despite the seemingly low levels of CER across firms in the sample (average: 32.6%), the results depict that CER is positively associated with stock liquidity. The results are robust even when we consider changes in bid-ask spreads and CER together with the other variables. The same results emerge when we study the association between bid-ask spreads and each CER item at a time over the period 2011–2015.

The results imply that listed companies in Kenya that engage in higher CER seem to be more attractive to investors. The higher CER seems to improve the information environment, hence reducing information asymmetry and therefore attracting investors. The results provide some evidence of positive economic consequences of engaging in additional disclosure over and above the traditional corporate financial reporting.

The study adds onto the dearth of literature on the economic consequences of embracing additional disclosure frameworks in developing countries where the adoption of alternative reporting frameworks is at infancy.