Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP2416
Authors: Harrison G. Hong; Sven Rady
Abstract: We develop a multi-period model of strategic trading in an asset market where traders are uncertain about market liquidity. In our model, informed traders strategically trade against competitive market makers to exploit their short-lived private information. Unlike market makers, informed traders do not know whether the liquidity ('noise') trades are generated from a distribution with high or low variance. Instead, informed traders have to learn about liquidity from past prices. We find the following. (1) Prices that deviate markedly from the forecast of terminal asset value based on public news tend to lead to revisions of informed traders' beliefs in favour of the low liquidity state. (2) This revision in beliefs results in less aggressive trading on private information by informed traders. (3) In turn, informational efficiency and trading volume are dependent on the path of prices. (4) Moreover, learning about liquidity also has interesting effects on the unconditional properties of optimal strategic trading policies.
Keywords: strategic trading; private information; liquidity uncertainty; Bayesian learning
JEL Codes: D40; D83; G12; G14
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| price deviations (D43) | belief revisions (D83) |
| belief revisions (D83) | less aggressive trading (G19) |
| price deviations (D43) | less aggressive trading (G19) |
| price path (D40) | market dynamics (D49) |
| learning about liquidity (E41) | trading patterns (F10) |
| trading patterns (F10) | market outcomes (P42) |