Understanding the ex-ante cost of liquidity in the limit order book: A note

This paper estimates a new measure of liquidity costs in a market driven by orders. It represents thecost of simultaneously buying and selling a given amount of shares, and it is given by a single measure of ex-ante liquidity that aggregates all available information in the limit order book for a given number of shares. The cost of liquidity is an increasing function relating bid-ask spreads with the amounts available for trading. This measure completely characterizes the cost of liquidity of any given asset. It does not suffer from the usual ambiguities related to either the bid-ask spread or depth when they are considered separately. On the contrary, with a single measure, we are able to capture all dimensions of liquidity costs on ex-ante basis.

Asset pricing and systematic liquidity risk: an empirical investigation of the Spanish stock market

Systematic liquidity shocks should affect the optimal behavior of agents in financial markets. Indeed, fluctuations in various measures of liquidity are significantly correlated across common stocks. Accordingly, this paper empirically analyzes whether Spanish average returns vary cross-sectionally with betas estimated relative to two competing liquidity risk factors. The first one, proposed by Pastor and Stambaugh (2002), is associated with the strength of volume-related return reversals. Our marketwide liquidity factor is defined as the difference between returns highly sensitive to changes in the relative bid-ask spread and returns with low sensitivities to those changes. Our empirical results show that neither of these proxies for systematic liquidity risk seems to be priced in the Spanish stock market. Further international evidence is deserved.

Markov Switching Risk Premium and the term structure of interest rates. Empirical evidence from US post-war interest rates

This paper considers the basic present value model of interest rates under rational expectations with two additional features. First, following McCallum (1994), the model assumes a policy reaction function where changes in the short-term interest rate are determined by the long-short spread. Second, the short-term interest rate and the risk premium processes are characterized by a Markov regime-switching model. Using US post-war interest rate data, this paper finds evidence that a two-regime switching model fits the data better than the basic model. The estimation results also show the presence of two alternative states displaying quite different features.

Skill premium effects on fertility and female labor force supply

Published as an article in: Journal of Population Economics, 2004, vol. 17, issue 1, pages 1-16.

Price Premium for High-Efficiency Refrigerators and Calculation of Price-Elasticities for Close-Substitutes: Combining Hedonic Pricing and Demand Systems

21 p.

Systematic liquidity: commonality and inter-temporal variation in the Portuguese stock market

[EN] The aim of this paper is to study systematic liquidity at the Euronext Lisbon Stock Exchange. The motivation for this research is provided by the growing interest in financial literature about stock liquidity and the implications of commonality in liquidity for asset pricing since it could represent a source of non-diversifiable risk. Namely, it is analysed whether there exist common factors that drive the variation in individual stock liquidity and the causes of the inter-temporal variation of aggregate liquidity. Monthly data for the period between January 1988 and December 2011 is used to compute some of the most used proxies for liquidity: bid-ask spreads, turnover rate, trading volume, proportion of zero returns and the illiquidity ratio. Following Chordia et al. (2000) methodology, some evidence of commonality in liquidity is found in the Portuguese stock market when the proportion of zero returns is used as a measure of liquidity. In relation to the factors that drive the inter-temporal variation of the Portuguese stock market liquidity, the results obtained within a VAR framework suggest that changes in real economy activity, monetary policy (proxied by changes in monetary aggregate M1) and stock market returns play an important role as determinants of commonality in liquidity.

The Impact of Firm Level Contracting on Wage Levels and Inequality: Spain 1995-2002

This paper provides microeconomic evidence on the variation over time of the firm-specific wage premium in Spain from 1995 to 2002, and its impact on wage inequality. We make use of two waves of a detailed linked employer-employee data set. In addition, a new data set with financial information on firms is used for 2002 to control as flexibly as possible for differences in the performance of firms (aggregated at industry level). To our knowledge, there is no microeconomic evidence on the dynamics of the firm-specific wage premium for Spain or for any other country with a similar institutional setting. Our results suggest that there is a clear tendency towards centralization in the collective bargaining process in Spain over this seven-year period, that the firm-level contract wage premium undergoes a substantial decrease, particularly for women, and finally that the "centralization" observed in the collective bargaining process has resulted in a slight decrease in wage inequality.

The effect of firm-level contracts on the structure of wages: evidence from matched employer-employee data

Revised: 2006-11

An empirical comparison of the performance of alternative option pricing models

Published as an article in: Investigaciones Economicas, 2005, vol. 29, issue 3, pages 483-523.

Las Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación en la gestión de tesorería: modelo explicativo

[ES] En el presente trabajo se analiza el uso de las TIC (Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación) en las responsabilidades de la gestión de la tesorería, tomando como referencia para su estudio las empresas de la CAPV (Comunidad Autónoma del País Vasco). Los resultados indican que las TIC más utilizadas por las empresas en operaciones financieras son el software financiero, Internet y la banca electrónica. Además, estos resultados han permitido desarrollar un modelo explicativo del uso de las TIC en las principales funciones del tesorero, como son la gestión de cobros y pagos, gestión de la liquidez, previsiones de tesorería a corto plazo, gestión de saldos bancarios en fecha valor, negociación con entidades financieras, gestión de la financiación del déficit de tesorería, gestión de la colocación de puntas de tesorería y gestión de riesgos de tipo de interés y tipo de cambio.

Multirating decision model validation: the relevance of the quality of the securitization issues

Rating enables the information asymmetry existing in the issuer-investor relationship to be reduced, particularly for issues with a high degree of complexity, as is the case of securitizations. However, there may be a serious conflict of interest between the issuer’s choice and remuneration of the agency and the credit rating awarded, resulting in lower quality and information power of the published rating. In this paper, we propose an explicative model of the number of ratings requested, by analyzing the relevance of the number of ratings to measure the reliability, where multirating is shown to be associated to the quality, size, liquidity and the degree of information asymmetry relating to the issue. Thus, we consider that the regulatory changes that foster the widespread publication of simultaneous ratings could help to alleviate the problem of rating model arbitrage and the crisis of confidence in credit ratings in general and in the securitization issues, in particular.

Evaluating the role of energy efficiency labels in the prices of household appliances: the case of refrigerators

4 p.

Valuation of wind energy projects: A real options approach

27 p.

Economic Evaluation of Energy Efficiency Labelling in Domestic Appliances: the Spanish Market

30 p.

Análisis económico-financiero de las empresas del sector de comercio al por menor en el Pais Vasco

El trabajo consiste en realizar un análisis económico-financiero de las empresas del sector del comercio al por menor en establecimientos no especializados, con predominio en productos alimenticios establecidas en el País Vasco, centrándose especialmente en el diagnóstico de su situación actual y la evolución reciente de su liquidez, riesgo y rentabilidad. The work consists of carry out an economic and financial analysis of companies in the retail trade in non-specialized sector, stores with food products based in the Basque Country, especially focusing on the diagnosis of the current situation and recent developments their liquidity, risk and profitability.