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1. Introduction
How financial asset prices adjust to information has long been a focus in finance literature.
Evidence that a market is quite efficient (Fama, 1970) over a daily horizon does not preclude
inefficiencies at shorter horizons. Investors need time to absorb and act on new information. The
(Michaely et al., 1995; Bernard and Thomas, 1989), and other anomalies (for example, Jegadeesh and
Titman, 1993, 2001) has led to a search for alternative theoretical models to describe the price
adjustment process. A number of behavioral models have been developed to provide a rationale for the
under (over) reactions documented by Barberis et al. (1998), Daniel et al. (1998), and Hong and Stein
(1999); Fama (1998) and Hirshleifer (2001) provide excellent overviews and discussions of this topic.
Recent research on the microstructure of securities markets draws attention to the role of the market's
organization in the determination of security prices. It is now increasingly recognized that institutional
factorssuch as brokers' handling of investors' orders, the management of the limit order book, or the
continuity"affect the speed of price adjustment to changing conditions. For example, Cushing and
Madhavan (2000), and Chordia et al. (2005) document that short horizon returns are predictable from
past order flows. This study extends the scope of the analysis by explicitly examining how liquidity,
stock attributes, information environment, and market structure impact the degree of market efficiency
of an individual stock.
Amihud and Mendelson (1987) suggest a price adjustment model in which observed prices
noisily and partially adjust towards their intrinsic values. Along similar lines, a number of estimators
have been developed in the literature. Damodaran (1993) and Brisley and Theobald (1996) estimate the
speed of price adjustments using the partial adjustment model. Thoebald and Yallup (2004) compare
the speed of price adjustments between large and small company stocks. Most of the previous research
focuses on the improvement of the estimator and/or how the speed of price adjustment is related to
trading volume. Two studies are closely related to this paper. Chung et al. (2008) analyze the speed at
which quotes adjust to new information, but they focus on quote width and depth. Chordia et al. (2008)
suggests that market efficiency is related to liquidity, but they neither directly study the speed of price
adjustment, nor directly investigate the role of liquidity provision in market efficiency. To the best of
my knowledge, prior studies offer little evidence with respect to the speed at which new information is
incorporated into the price. There is also limited evidence regarding how liquidity provision and
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market structure affect the speed at which new information is incorporated into price. Using the speed
of price adjustment as a proxy for individual stock efficiency, this study may shed further light on our
Traders do not always immediately incorporate new information into their prices for a number
of reasons. For instance, traders may react faster to new information for stocks with greater
adverse-selection risks because the cost of not doing so is greater for such stocks. Furthermore, an
important question is whether liquidity is related to the degree of market efficiency. Markets are
incorporated into the price, there will be powerful economic incentives to uncover and trade on that
information. This arbitrage trading should be more extensive and effective when the market is more
liquid. Thus, an important issue is how liquidity improvements are related to market efficiency.
This study investigates the following questions using a large sample of New York Stock
Exchange (NYSE) and NASDAQ stocks: (1) How quickly does the stock price reflect new information
through trading? Does the stock price on the NYSE reflect new information more quickly than that on
NASDAQ? (2) How is individual stock efficiency related to stock attributes? For example, do stocks
with greater information-based trading exhibit faster price adjustments towards equilibrium value?
Answers to these questions would be of interest not only to investors and researchers, but also to stock
exchanges facing increased competition from foreign markets expanding their trading hours and from
the creation of new electronic communication networks (ECNs). This study is also relevant to market
regulators, who continuously respond to the technological innovation in trading environments to
This paper employs the partial adjustment model to analyze how quickly security prices on the
NYSE and NASDAQ adjust in response to new information. The empirical results show that the
overall market efficiency on the NYSE is better than that of NASDAQ. In both markets, individual
stock price efficiency is higher for those stocks with relatively larger number of trades, higher prices,
and greater return volatility, among other factors. The results also indicate that liquidity provision and
information-based trading enhance market efficiency. Numerous studies employ a variance ratio (for
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example, Chordia et al. (2008)) and Dimson beta regression approach to study market efficiency. Both
measurements capture slightly different aspects of market efficiency compared to the partial
individual stock efficiency based on Dimson's beta regression and variance ratio approach and finds
similar results. On the whole, this study depicts a picture in which liquidity provision, stock attributes,
informational environment, and market structure together determine individual stock price efficiency.
Its known that NYSE stocks are quite different from stocks listed on NASDAQ in terms of
firm size, liquidity, etc. To rule out the possibility that the observed differences in price efficiency are
driven by differences in stock attributes, this study performs a matching sample analysis on 686 pairs
of matched NYSE and NASDAQ stocks. Empirical results are similar to the results for the whole
sample. These results suggest that the observed differences in price efficiency cannot be attributed to
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the hypotheses. Section
3 explains the methodology. Section 4 explains data sources and presents descriptive statistics. Section
5 examines how the individual stock efficiency is related to stock attributes, information environment,
2. Statement of hypotheses
This section presents the hypotheses on how individual stock price efficiency is determined by
liquidity provision, stock attributes, informational environment, dealer competition, and market
structure.
The institutional differences between the NYSE and NASDAQ are likely to affect the level of
individual stock price efficiency. The NYSE is an order-driven, continuous-auction market with an
individual specialist assigned to each stock. Specialists facilitate continuous trading by posting quotes
for their own accounts or by reflecting the best quotes on their limit order book. Chung et al. (1999)
documents that only 5.9% of the posted spreads are quoted exclusively by specialists in their
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designated stocks. In contrast, the NASDAQ market is based on a competing-dealer system in which
each dealer continually posts firm bid and ask quotes on an electronic screen. Further, NASDAQ
dealers do not have access to a central limit order book. It is costly for NASDAQ market makers to
monitor trade arrivals constantly and quote changes by other market-makers; it may be impossible for
such market makers to respond instantly to the information contained in an arriving trade. Overall, the
more centralized specialist system on the NYSE is likely to result in a higher level of market
efficiency.
Dealer competition on NASDAQ is likely reduced by the rules allowing directed order flow to
preferred dealers. Chung, et al. (2004) show that a large portion of order flow on NASDAQ is either
internalized or based on payments for preferenced order flow agreements. NASDAQ dealers who bear
the risk of offering the best price, and hence facilitate the price discovery process, are not rewarded
with increased order flow. This reduces the incentives for dealers to improve quotes and slows down
price discovery. Although a part of the NYSE volume is also routed to regional exchanges according to
preferencing agreements between brokers and dealers, prior studies (Bessembinder, 2003) show that
NYSE specialists almost always post the most competitive quotes. Consequently, order preferencing
between brokers and regional dealers may not significantly compromise price competition on the NYSE.
These considerations suggest that the level of market efficiency on the NYSE is likely to be higher than
on NASDAQ.
Benveniste, et al. (1992) suggest that repeatedly dealing with the same brokers allows market
makers to know when brokers exploit private information.1 Garfinkel and Nimalendran (2003) find
insider trades are more transparent on the NYSE specialist system than on the NASDAQ dealer system.
Foucault et al. (2007) contrast two different trading mechanisms: a non-anonymous market (limit-order
traders IDs are visible) and an anonymous market (limit-order traders IDs are concealed). They show
that the quotes informativeness is smaller in the anonymous system if traders have asymmetric
information about future volatility. Because of the lower degree of anonymity on the NYSE, the
liquidity providers on the NYSE are likely to respond more quickly to information-based trading than
Hypothesis 1: The level of market efficiency on the NYSE is higher than that on NASDAQ.
Extensive evidence indicates that trading volumes and the volatility of stock returns are
positively correlated (see e.g., Karpoff, 1987 and Gallant et al., 1992). Although many theories attempt
to explain this correlation, there is no consensus on the key factors behind the volumevolatility relation.
Glosten and Milgrom (1985) develop a sequential trading model with informed and uninformed
investors and find that market makers and uninformed investors experience adverse selection when
trading with informed investors. By assumption, each investor is allowed to transact one unit of stock per
unit of time, so price changes are completely independent of trade size. Easley and OHara (1987) extend
this model to allow traders to transact at varying trade sizes and by introducing uncertainty in the
information arrival process of the informed trader. When investors act competitively, Easley and OHara
find larger trades exhibit a greater adverse selection effect. Thus, there is a positive relation between
On the other hand, if informed investors are allowed to break up orders strategically, as in Kyle
(1985), Amati and Pfleiderer (1988), Foster and Vishwanathan (1990), and Back (1992), then the effect
of trade size on price volatility is attenuated; the number of trades executed, in such a case, has a more
meaningful impact on price volatility than trade size. Supporting this view, Barclay and Warner (1993)
report empirical evidence from the NYSE consistent with informed investors breaking up large trades to
better hide their information-motivated trading activity. This evidence suggests the need to investigate
whether price volatility reacts differently to trades depending on their size category; the number of
trades may also have significant information content for stock prices.
The role of the number of trades in price formation is highlighted by Easley and OHara (1992),
who show that the presence or absence of trades may provide information to market participants.
Specifically, the larger the number of trades, the higher the probability that new information has arrived.
Thus, the number of trades assumes the role of the information arrival rate.
Jones et al. (1994) analyze stock price volatility on the NASDAQ market and find that trade
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size appears to have an immaterial effect once the number of trades is taken into account. Jones, Kaul,
and Lipson (1994) (JKL) maintain that the occurrence of transactions per se contains all of the
information pertinent to pricing securities. Their results are confirmed by Huang and Masulis (2003)
If the number of trades has a greater impact on price volatility than trade size, then, given that
liquidity providers update quotes in response to information generated by trades, liquidity providers are
likely to update quotes more quickly for stocks that are actively traded and have large return volatility.
Hypothesis 2: Individual stock price efficiency is positively related to both the number of trades and
return volatility.
Chung and Chuwonganant (2002) show that low-price stocks exhibit relatively fewer quote
revisions that accompany a spread change. They interpret this result as evidence that the minimum price
variation is more frequently a binding constraint on absolute spreads for low-price stocks. Chung et al.
(2004) calculate the proportion of spreads that equals one penny to assess the extent to which the penny
tick is a binding constraint. They find that even under decimal pricing, the penny tick is still a significant
binding constraint for low-price stocks. Therefore, liquidity providers are likely to make slower price
adjustments towards equilibrium for low-price stocks because the binding constraint prevents them from
Information about fundamentals is capitalized into stock prices in two ways: through a general
revaluation of stock values following the release of public information, such as unemployment statistics
or quarterly earnings, and through the trading activity of risk arbitrageurs who gather private
information. Roll (1988) finds that firm-specific stock price movements are generally not associated
with identifiable news release; thus he argues that the second channel is especially important in the
active trading by informed arbitrageurs and thus may signal that the stock price is tracking its
fundamental value quite closely. Similarly, liquidity providers are more likely to make faster quote
revisions to equilibrium when competition is higher. These considerations lead to the following
hypothesis:
Hypothesis 4: The level of stock price efficiency is positively related to both adverse-selection risks (and
Prior literature explores a link between liquidity and stock returns by way of a premium
demanded by investors for trading in illiquid stocks. For example, Amihud and Mendelson (1986) and
Jacoby et al. (2000) provide theoretical arguments and empirical evidence to support the existence of
liquidity premia. In addition, Jones (2001) and Amihud (2002) show that liquidity predicts expected
returns in the time-series, and Pastor and Stambaugh (2003) and Acharya and Pedersen (2005) find that
expected stock returns are cross-sectionally related to liquidity risk. This paper explores a distinctly
different link between liquidity and asset prices by examining whether liquidity is associated with an
Kyle (1985) suggests that markets are illiquid because prices for buying and selling shares are
different, but prices also are martingales because market makers are risk-neutral. Thus, in this model,
current prices and order flows do not predict future returns. However, if market makers have limited
risk-bearing capacity, persistent asymmetric orders will lead to predictable returns due to temporary
deviations of prices from fundamental values. If arbitrageurs can detect such deviations and submit
arbitrage trades, they may speed up the convergence of prices to fundamental values. However, the
possibility for these traders to submit arbitrage orders would be positively influenced by liquidity.
Hypothesis 5: The level of stock price efficiency is positively related to liquidity provision.
3. Methodology
The following partial adjustment model is used to measure the speed of price adjustment:
P (t ) = {V (t ) P (t 1)} + u (t ) (1)
V (t ) = + e(t ) (2)
where P (t ) is the change in the actual (or observed) price (with the change operator), expressed
in natural logarithms, , is the speed of adjustment coefficient, which will be within the range [0, 2]
for non-explosive processes, u (t ) a white noise term, V (t ) the change in logarithmic intrinsic
values, the mean of the intrinsic value random walk process and e(t ) the innovations in
logarithmic intrinsic values which will be serially uncorrelated in efficient markets. The speed of
adjustment coefficient, , equals to one when prices fully and unbiasedly adjust while it will be greater
R (t ) = (1 ) R (t 1) + V (t ) + u (t ) (3)
R (t ) = + (1 ) R (t 1) + e(t ) + u (t ) (4)
However, the speed of price adjustment coefficient, , is not a direct stock price efficiency measure due
to lack of monotonicity. When is greater than one, it falls into the over-reaction scenario. Therefore,
ar = 1 1 ; (5)
where is the partial adjustment coefficient estimated from Eq. (4). If equals to one (i.e., when
liquidity providers fully incorporated concurrent information into quote midpoint), ar equals to one. If
is either greater or less than one, ar ranges between zero and 1. The closer is ar to one, the more
efficient the stock price is in the sense that the stock price moves quickly towards its equilibrium value
to incorporate the new information. equals to whenever is smaller than or equal to one.
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This paper also looks at another measure of stock price efficiency based on contemporaneous
and lagged betas from the Dimson beta regressions. The Dimson beta regressions analyze the pattern
of under or overreaction with respect to a single common benchmark (market returns), which is
5
ri ,t = i +
k = 5
r
i , k m ,t k + u i ,t (6)
where ri ,t is the daily return on the stock, rm,t is the daily return on the market index, and i , k is
the beta with respect to the market return at lag k. This paper uses the NYSE/AMEX equal-weighted
market index as a proxy of the market portfolio. For simplicity, consider a Dimson beta regression with
just one lag and one lead. In comparing the speed of adjustment of two stocks A and B, returns of stock
B are said to adjust faster to common information than do returns of stock A if and only if stock Bs
contemporaneous beta, B ,0 , is greater than stock As contemporaneous beta, A,0 , and stock Bs
lagged beta, B ,1 , is less than stock A's lagged A,1 . Chordia and Swaminathan (2000) modify the
DELAY measure proposed by McQueen et al. (1996) based on the Dimson beta regression:
1
d, i = (7)
1 + ex
where
k =1
i ,k
x= (8)
i ,0
However, one problem with this DELAY measure is still the non-monotonicity. One cannot simply say
the larger the DELAY measure, the more efficient the price is because when the DELAY measure is
over 0.5, its the over-reaction case. Therefore, the DELAY measure has to be transformed by equation
(9) to make it a monotonic measurement of the market efficiency of the stock price:
Finally, this paper also looks at a third measurement for market efficiency based on the
observation that for a random walk price process, the variance of long-horizon returns is q times the
variance of short horizon returns, where q is the number of short horizon intervals in the longer horizon.
Deviations from a random walk benchmark can arise for various reasons; for example, inventory
control activity can induce return serial correlation (Grossman and Miller, 1988).
This paper considers the ratio of mid-quote return variances computed from five-minute
intervals and from open-to-close of trading days. In computing this variance ratio, the five-minute
return variance is multiplied by the number of five-minute intervals in a trading day. For a random
walk, this scaled variance ratio would converge to one in large samples. For the same reason as the
other two efficiency estimators, the raw measurement has to be transformed in order to make the
Each of the three measurements captures a distinctive aspect in the price formation process.
The partial adjustment model captures the speed at which firm-specific information is incorporated
into the prices. The Dimson beta approach describes the speed at which the market information is
absorbed into the prices. The variance ratio approach directly test the random walk process. The results
complement each other.
Trade and quote data for the 1-year period from Feb 2008 to Feb 2009 are obtained from the
NYSEs Trade and Quote (TAQ) database. Stocks with average share prices under $2 are eliminated
from the sample. The following trades and quotes are omitted to minimize data errors: quotes with an
ask price or bid price less than or equal to zero; quotes with an ask size or bid size less than or equal to
zero; quotes with bid-ask spreads greater than $5 or less than zero; quotes associated with trading halts
or designated order imbalances; before-the-open and after the-close trades and quotes; trades and
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quotes involving errors or corrections; trades with price or volume less than or equal to zero; trade
price, pt, if |(pt pt-1)/pt-1| > 0.10; ask quote, at, if |(at at-1) /at-1| > 0.10; and bid quote, bt, if |(bt
bt-1)/bt-1| > 0.10. National best bids and offers (NBBOs) are constructed using quotes from all
exchanges. Data required for calculation of market capitalizations are retrieved from CRSP. The final
sample includes 4,138 stocks, of which 1,868 NYSE stocks, and 2,270 NASD stocks.
Each trading day is partitioned into 78 successive five-minute intervals to calculate the
variables used in the partial adjustment approach. Share price is measured by the quote midpoint at the
end of each interval and return volatility by the standard deviation of quote midpoint returns during
each interval. Trading frequency is measured by the number of trades during each interval and trade
size by the size of the last trade in each interval. Quoted spread of each stock at time t is measured by
(Askt Bidt)/Mt; where Askt is the ask price, Bidt is the bid price, and Mt is the mean of Askt and Bidt. To
measure the cost of trading when it occurs at prices inside the posted bid and ask quotes, effective spread
is measured by 2Qt (Pt Mt)/Mt; where Pt is the transaction price at time t, Mt is the midpoint of the most
recently posted bid and ask quotes for the stock, and Q t equals 1 for buyer-initiated trades and 1 for
seller-initiated trades. Qt is estimated using the Lee and Ready (1991) algorithm as modified by
Bessembinder (2003).
Panel A of Table 1 shows daily descriptive statistics on the final sample. On the whole, NYSE
stocks have higher share prices, larger trade size and number of trades, lower return volatility, larger
market capitalization, smaller spreads, and smaller depths.
5. Empirical findings
Eq. (4) is estimated for each stock in the final sample using the five-minute interval data. Eq. (6)
is estimated for each stock in the final sample using daily observation.
The mean values of for the NYSE and NASDAQ stocks are calculated together with
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t-statistics for testing the equality of the mean. Because estimates of the partial adjustment coefficient
for certain stocks are less meaningful (i.e., smaller t-values) than those for other stocks, The weighted
averages of using the reciprocal of the standard error (SE) of each estimated coefficient as weight are
calculated and reported in the empirical results.2 The mean values of ar of NYSE and NASDAQ
Panel A of Table 2 shows that the mean value of partial adjustment coefficient estimates is
0.8530 for the NYSE sample and 0.7219 for the NASDAQ sample, and the difference between the two
figures is statistically significant at the 1% level. These results indicate that liquidity providers in both
markets only partially reflect the newly arrived information. The mean value of ar estimates for the
NYSE sample is significantly greater than the corresponding figures for the NASDAQ sample. These
results indicate that liquidity providers on the NYSE make faster price adjustments towards the
equilibrium than their counterparts on NASDAQ. Qualitatively similar results are found for the
Dimson beta model (i.e., Eq. (6)). These results support hypothesis 1.3
[Place Table 2 Market Efficiency for NYSE and NASDAQ Stocks here]
As shown in Panel A of Table 1, the stock attributes between NYSE and NASDAQ are quite
different; for example, NYSE stocks have larger transaction sizes and represent larger firm sizes than
NASDAQ stocks. Thus, differences in price efficiency could be entirely driven by the differences in
stock attributes. As a robustness check, a matching sample analysis is performed to rule out the
possibility that the observed differences in market efficiency are driven by the differences of stock
attributes. The matched samples of NYSE and NASDAQ stocks are obtained by looking at trade size,
price, return volatility, and market capitalization.4 This matching procedure results in 686 pairs of
Panel B of Table 1 shows descriptive statistics on the matched sample. The stock attributes of
the NYSE and NASDAQ firms are more similar in this matched sample than in the full sample.
Panel B of Table 2 shows the market efficiency comparison results for the matched sample,
which still support the conjecture that NYSE liquidity providers make faster price adjustment than
5
ar/d = 0 + i X i + 6 GKN/GH + 7 PIN + 8 PS/ES + 9 MM (NASDAQ stocks) + (11)
i =1
where ar and d are the market efficiency measures due to partial adjustment and Dimson beta model
respectively, Xi (i = 1 to 5) is one of the five stock attributes (i.e., NTRADE, TSIZE, PRICE, RISK
and MVE), denotes the summation over i = 1 to 5, 0 through 9 are regression coefficients, and
is the error term. GKN is the adverse-selection component of the spread based on George et al. (1991),
GH is the adverse-selection component of the spread based on Glosten and Harris (1988), PIN is the
probability of information-based trading (Easley et al. 2002), and MM is the number of market-makers
(NASDAQ stocks).
Eq. (11) is estimated using the weighted regression procedure to reflect the statistical
significance of estimates. The reciprocal of the standard error of partial adjustment coefficients (i.e., )
from the first-pass regressions (partial adjustment model/Dimson beta model) is used as weight in the
second-pass regression (i.e., Eq. (11)). Log of number of trades, trade size, share price, market value of
Panels A and B of Table 3 show the results of regressions (11) using ar and d values that are
estimated from the partial adjustment model and the Dimson beta model respectively. In each panel, the
first four columns show the results for NYSE stocks, followed by four columns on NASDAQ stocks, and
Panel A shows that both market efficiency measures are significantly and positively related to the
number of trades and the share price for both NYSE and NASDAQ stocks in most regressions. For
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example, the coefficients on log transformation of number of trades for NYSE stocks in the partial
adjustment model approach are 0.0637 and 0.0296 with either GH or GKN as the measurement of the
adverse-selection cost. Both are significant at 5% level. The results are similar for NASDAQ stocks and
on the whole sample. These results are generally consistent with hypotheses 2 and 3 and support the idea
that trades convey information and the penny tick is more likely a binding constraint on the spreads of
low-price stocks. The results show that ar and d are significantly negatively related to trade size in
most regressions. For example, the coefficients on log transformation of trade size for NYSE stocks in
the partial adjustment model approach are -0.0828 and -0.1101 with either GH or GKN as the
measurement of the adverse-selection cost. Both are significant at 5% level. The results are similar for
NASDAQ stocks and for the whole sample. Because of the ambiguity on trade size, it is unclear what
Both ar and d are positively related to the adverse-selection component of the spread (i.e.,
GKN/GH) although only the results on the GH measurement are significant. For example, the
coefficients on GH for NYSE stocks are 0.3527 and 0.8908 in the Dimson Beta approach and partial
adjustment approach. Both are significant at 1% level. The results are similar for NASDAQ stocks and
for the whole sample. The results for the probability of information-based trading (PIN) are mixed and
significant only when PIN is positively related to the price efficiency. These results are generally
consistent with hypothesis 4, supporting the idea that prices are more efficient in response to new
information is less available for small firms. For example, the coefficients on log transformation of
firm size for NASDAQ stocks in the partial adjustment model approach are 0.0731 and 0.0694 with
either GH or GKN as the measurement of the adverse-selection cost. Both are significant at 1% level.
Both ar and d are not significantly related to the number of market makers for NASDAQ
stocks, which indicates that order preferencing on NASDAQ leads to slow price discovery on
NASDAQ.
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Both ar and d are negatively related to the percentage quoted spread in all regressions, which
indicates that illiquidity hinders arbitrage activity, and thus reduces market efficiency. For example, the
coefficients on percentage quoted spread for NYSE stocks in the partial adjustment model approach
are -45.66 and -53.62 with either GH or GKN as the measurement of the adverse-selection cost. Both
are significant at 5% level. The results are similar for the whole sample.
The results of the second-pass regressions regressing ar and d on effective spread model (see
Panel B) are generally similar to those in Panel A. These results indicate that the results are not sensitive
To test whether market efficiency is higher on the NYSE, the following cross-sectional
regression model is estimated using the pooled sample of NYSE and NASDAQ stocks:
5
ar/d = 0 + i X i + 6 GKN/GH + 7 PIN + 8 PS / ES + 9 NYSE + ; (14)
i =1
where NYSE is a dummy variable which equals one for NYSE stocks and zero for NASDAQ stocks and
coefficients on the NYSE dummy variable are positive and significant in all but one regression,
indicating that prices are more efficient on NYSE than that on NASDAQ. For example, the coefficients
on the NYSE dummy variable are 0.1756 and 0.1800 in the partial adjustment model approach with
percentage spread as the measurement of liquidity. Both are significant at 5% level. This result confirms
This section presents the results on the variance test as a robustness check. As explained in
section 3, the variance of long-horizon returns is q times the variance of short horizon returns, where q
is the number of short horizon intervals in the longer horizon. In computing this variance ratio, the
five-minute return variance is multiplied by the number of five-minute intervals in a trading day. For a
random walk, this scaled variance ratio would converge to one in large samples. Table 4 shows the
correlation among the three price efficiency estimator. They are all strongly positively correlated with
each other.
Its of interest to explore the patterns in the liquidityefficiency relations across groups
categorized by firm liquidity. Table 5 shows results for subsamples formed by ranking firms by their
liquidity measurement, for example, percentage spread, dividing the ranked firms into thirds. All of the
three price efficiency estimators show a monotonic decline with the decline in the liquidity
measurement, indicating that the prices for the most liquid firms conform more closely to random
walks. The evidence is consistent with the expectation that deviations from random walk benchmark
should be reduced when markets are more liquid. Similar results on the NYSE/NSADAQ comparison
and stock attributes regression results are also obtained with the variance ratio estimator.5
[Place Table 4 Correlation among the Three Market Efficiency Estimators here]
stock attributes jointly determine individual stocks price efficiency. Three distinct approachesthe
partial adjustment model, Dimson beta model, and variance ratio testare used to investigate the
cross-sectional variation of market efficiency. Empirical evidence shows stocks with better liquidity
provision, more frequent trading, greater return volatility, higher prices, and larger market
capitalizations exhibit higher levels of market efficiency. Market efficiency also varies with the
information environment, such as formation-based trading. NYSE stocks achieve higher level of
of significant interest not only to investors and market microstructure researchers, but also to stock
In a dealer market, such as NASDAQ, investors buy (sell) at a dealers ask (bid) price. In an
auction market, such as NYSE, investors buy (sell) at the ask (bid) price established by a limit order of
another investor. Auction markets typically also feature a centralized specialist who is responsible for
maintaining liquidity and an orderly market. Proponents of dealer markets argue for the flexibility to
deal with different types of customers. Proponents of auction markets show evidence that investors
Despite the long-standing debate between auction and dealer markets, few studies directly
compare the informational efficiency on the two markets. As exchanges around the world search for a
better market structure, the speed with which price adjusts to new information may be one criterion
that they should look at in making their choices. In this respect, the finding of the present study that
better liquidity provision and greater transparency about who is trading on an auction market, NYSE,
increase the market informational efficiency should prove useful to investors, regulators, and exchange
officials.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Kee Chung, Kenneth Kim, Carl Hsin-han Shen, Hao Zhang, and seminar
participants at University at Buffalo and Sacred Heart University for valuable comments and
discussions. The author is responsible for the content.
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Author Biography
Dr. Jing Jiang earned his Ph.D. at the University at Buffalo in 2009. Currently he is a professor of finance
at Sacred Heart University. His work appears in Journal of Banking and Finance, Economics Letters,
Journal of International Financial Studies. His research focuses on market microstructure and corporate
finance.
Footnotes
[1] Benveniste et al. (1992) note that NYSE specialists have continuous face-to-face contact with floor
brokers while such contact is not available to NASDAQ dealers because NASDAQ operates on an
electronic screen-based system.
[2] Specifically, I multiply each estimated coefficient by the ratio of its own 1/SE to the sum of 1/SE
across all NYSE (or NASDAQ) stocks in the final sample and then add up these weighted
coefficients across stocks in each market.
[3] Our results also indicate that the mean value of () estimates is significantly different from one
for partial adjustment model and 0.5 for Dimson beta model, for both NYSE and NASDAQ stocks.
[4] Although NASDAQ uses the same volume counting rules as the NYSE, the reported number of
trades on NASDAQ is not directly comparable to that on the NYSE because there are many interdealer
trades and dealer-to-customer interactions on NASDAQ. Hence, we do not use the number of trades as
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a matching variable.
[5] For the sake of space, the results are not reported in the paper.
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Table 1
Descriptive Statistics
Panel A shows descriptive statistics on full sample of 1,868 NYSE stocks and 2,270 NASDAQ stocks. Detailed description of the variable measurement is in section 4.
Panel B shows descriptive statistics on 686 matched pairs of NYSE and NASDAQ stocks. I obtain matched samples of NYSE and NASDAQ stocks that are similar in
trade size, price, return volatility, and market capitalization.
Table 2
Market Efficiency for NYSE and NASDAQ Stocks
This table shows the mean values of partial adjustment coefficients (), the mean values of price adjustment speeds, and results of the mean difference test. is
estimated with the ARMA model, R (t ) = + (1 ) R (t 1) + e(t ) + u (t ) . is a transformation of the coefficient, ar = 1 1 . This table also
shows the corresponding and based on Dimson beta approach following equation (6), (7), (8) and (9) in the paper. Panels A shows the results from the
whole study sample of NYSE and NASDAQ stocks and Panel B shows the results from the matched sample of NYSE and NASDAQ stocks.
Table 3
Market Efficiency and Stock Attributes
5
This table shows the results of the following regression model: d or ar = 0 + i X i + 6 GKN/GH + 7 PIN + 8 PS / ES + 9 MM (NASDAQ stocks) +
i =1
Where d/ ar are the measures of the market efficiency, Xi (i = 1 to 5) is one of the five stock attributes, 0 through 9 are the regression coefficients, and is
the error term. GKN/GH denotes the adverse-selection component of the spread following George et al. (1991) and Glosten and Harris (1988), PIN is the
probability of information-based trading, PS and ES denote percentage quoted spread and effective spread respectively, and MM is the number of market-makers
for NASDAQ stocks. Panel A shows the results with percentage quoted spread, Panel B shows the results with the effective spread model. Within each panel, the
first four columns show the results for NYSE stocks, followed by four columns for NASDAQ stocks, then followed by four columns for the combined sample.
Numbers in parentheses are t-statistics.
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Table 3 (continued)
Price efficiency and stock attributes
Adjusted R2 0.1395 0.1594 0.3766 0.3898 0.1072 0.1122 0.3170 0.3175 0.1254 0.1372 0.3607 0.3641
**Significant at the 1% level.
*Significant at the 5% level.
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Table 3 (continued)
Price efficiency and stock attributes
Adjusted R2 0.1396 0.1571 0.3856 0.3983 0.1087 0.1132 0.3174 0.3174 0.1262 0.1373 0.3607 0.3640
**Significant at the 1% level.
*Significant at the 5% level.
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Table 4
Correlation among the Three Market Efficiency Estimators
This table shows how the correlation among the three price efficiency estimators. Number in the parenthesis shows the associated p-value.
_______________________________________________________________________________
d ar var
_______________________________________________________________________________
d 0.1685** 0.1818**
(0.0001) (0.0001)
ar 0.1685** 0.1123**
(0.0001) (0.0001)
var 0.1818** 0.1123**
(0.0001) (0.0001)
_______________________________________________________________________________
Table 5
Liquidity-Efficiency Relations
This table shows the price efficiency patterns in liquidity categorized subsamples. We first rank our whole sample according the percentage spread into three
groups. Then we calculate the mean values of the three price efficiency measures within each group, respectively, and the results of t-tests on whether the
difference in the mean value between the three liquidity ranked subsamples is statistically significant.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Most liquid firms Liquid firms Illiquid firms
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Coefficient Difference (t-value) Coefficient Difference (t-value) Coefficient Difference (t-value)
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
d 0.4521 0.0203** (8.01) 0.4318 0.0689++ (16.38) 0.3629 0.0892## (22.71)
ar 0.7065 0.1280** (12.38) 0.5785 0.0133 (1.25) 0.5652 0.1413## (14.05)
var 0.7215 0.2106** (5.73) 0.5109 0.1701++ (3.01) 0.3408 0.3807## (7.83)
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
** 1% significant between the most liquid firms and the liquid firms
++
1% significant between the liquid firms and the illiquid firms
##
1% significant between the illiquid firms and the most liquid firms