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Journal of Finance Vol. 60 No. 3 2005

A Comparison of Centralized and Fragmented Markets with Costly Search

Xiangkang Yin1,2

1 Papua New Guinea University of Technology · 2 La Trobe University

Abstract

How does quotation transparency affect financial market performance? Biais's irrelevance proposition in 1993 shows that centralized markets yield the same expected bid–ask spreads as fragmented markets, other things equal. However, de Frutos and Manzano demonstrated in 2002 that expected spreads in fragmented markets are smaller and market participants prefer to trade in fragmented markets. This paper introduces liquidity traders' costs of searching for a better quote into the Biais model and derives opposite conclusions to these previous studies: expected spreads in centralized markets are smaller and liquidity traders prefer centralized markets, while market makers prefer fragmented markets.

DOI
10.1111/j.1540-6261.2005.00770.x
Volume
60
Issue
3
Pages
1567-1590
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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