• Graduate program
  • Research
  • Summer School
  • Events
    • Summer School
      • Applied Public Policy Evaluation
      • Economics of Blockchain and Digital Currencies
      • Economics of Climate Change
      • Foundations of Machine Learning with Applications in Python
      • From preference to choice: The Economic Theory of Decision-Making
      • Gender in Society
      • Business Data Science Summer School Program
    • Events Calendar
    • Events Archive
    • Tinbergen Institute Lectures
    • 16th Tinbergen Institute Annual Conference
    • Annual Tinbergen Institute Conference
  • News
  • Alumni
  • Magazine

Menkveld, AlbertJ. and Zoican, MariusA. (2017). Need for speed? Exchange latency and liquidity Review of Financial Studies, 30(4):1188--1228.

  • Journal
    Review of Financial Studies
View publication

A faster exchange does not necessarily improve liquidity. On the one hand, speed enables a high-frequency market maker (HFM) to update quotes faster on incoming news. This reduces payoff risk and thus lowers the competitive bid-ask spread. On the other hand, HFM price quotes are more likely to meet speculative high-frequency bandits, and thus are less likely to meet liquidity traders. This raises the spread. The net effect of exchange speed depends on a security's news-to-liquidity-trader ratio.