Marketmaking in the Laboratory: Does Competition Matter?

Jan Krahnen () and Martin Weber

No 4, Working Paper Series: Finance and Accounting from Department of Finance, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main

Abstract: This paper is the first experimental study of the effects of competition and adverse selection on the performance of market maker (MM-) markets. Information distribution may is either symmetric or heterogeneous. MM-markets are either monopolistic (the specialist markets), or competitive (the multi MM-market). Welfare comparisons are with respect to a continuous double auction (DA-) market. Informed subjects receive an imperfect signal of the true state of the world. We find three main results. First, competition among market makers significantly reduces the bid-ask spread, and increases transaction volume. Second, competition among market makers induces competitive undercutting, yielding net trading losses for market makers as a group in most periods. Third, from the perspective of uninformed traders, a competing MM-regime is optimal, since it minimizes their expected trading losses.

Keywords: market microstructure; dealer market; bid-ask spread; competition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 G14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
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