Financial intermediaries and contagion in market efficiency: The case of ETFs

Capital constraints of financial intermediaries can affect liquidity provision. We investigate whether these constraints spillover and consequently cause contagion in the degree of market efficiency across assets managed by a common intermediary. Specifically, we provide evidence of strong comovemen...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: HONG, Claire Yurong, LI, Frank Weikai, SUBRAHMANYAM, Avanidhar
Format: text
Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2022
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Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/7021
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/lkcsb_research/article/8020/viewcontent/SSRN_id4062962.pdf
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Institution: Singapore Management University
Language: English
Description
Summary:Capital constraints of financial intermediaries can affect liquidity provision. We investigate whether these constraints spillover and consequently cause contagion in the degree of market efficiency across assets managed by a common intermediary. Specifically, we provide evidence of strong comovement in pricing gaps between ETFs and their constituents for ETFs served by the same lead market maker (LMM). The effects are stronger for ETFs that are more illiquid and volatile, when the underlying constituents of the ETFs are more costly to arbitrage, and for LMMs with more constrained capital. Using extreme disruptions in debt markets during COVID-19 as an experiment, we show that non-fixed income ETFs serviced by LMMs managing a larger fraction of fixed income ETFs experience greater pricing gaps. Overall, our results indicate that intermediaries' constraints indeed influence comovements in pricing efficiencies.