Searching for a new center: U.S. securities markets in transition

Technological challenges, governance issues, competitive pressures, and questions about the oversight of trading practices are but a few of the many forces besetting U.S. equity markets. This article outlines some important issues surrounding the evolving structure of the U.S. equity markets and offers some alternative regulatory approaches that might be more consistent with this new competitive environment. ; Crafted more than a quarter-century ago in a time of dominant markets interacting with smaller competitors, the National Market System (NMS) was based on a one-size-fits-all approach in which all trade orders were to be treated equally. Over time, technology has enabled the development of new trading systems and dramatically expanded the number of potential competitors. In addition, the traditional market structure of member-owned cooperatives has given way to corporate ownership, which poses challenges for the self-regulatory structure underlying equity market supervision. ; Within this new environment, how should markets compete, how should they be linked, and how should they be regulated? To address these questions, the author discusses several pressing issues such as price-time priority, liquidity rebates, tape revenue, pricing increments, and access fees as well as more general issues such as the viability of self-regulation. ; The Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed Regulation NMS is a promising start toward addressing the current market structure’s needs. But the author feels that its changes are piecemeal and do not go deep enough to develop a new vision consistent with the current economic realities of equity markets. Where direction is most needed, she concludes, is at the firm level, where regulation must.

Models for Bundle Trading in Financial Markets

Bundle trading is a new trend in financial markets that allows traders to submit consolidated orders to sell and buy packages of assets. We propose a new formulation for portfolio bundle trading that extends the previous models of the literature through a more detailed representation of portfolios and the formulation of new bidding requirements. We also present post-optimality tie-breaking procedures intended to discriminate equivalent orders on the basis of their submission times. Numerical results evaluate the "bundle" effect as well as the bidding flexibility and the computational complexity of our formulation. Une nouvelle tendance dans les marchés financiers consiste à transiger des valeurs financières sous forme d'ordres composites d'achat et de vente. Nous proposons une nouvelle formulation basée sur les ordres composites du problème d'allocation de valeurs financières. Notre modèle, comparativement à ceux de la littérature, permet une représentation plus détaillée des portefeuilles financiers et la formulation de nouvelles contraintes transactionnelles. Nous présentons en outre une procédure de discrimination d'ordres équivalents sur la base de leur temps de soumission. Les résultats numériques de notre étude permettent d'évaluer empiriquement l'effet « ordres composites », ainsi que la flexibilité et la complexité numérique de notre formulation.Auction Design, Financial Markets, Bundle Trading, Discrimination Procedures, Mécanisme d'enchères, marchés financiers, ordres composites, procédures de discrimination

Microstructure theory and the foreign exchange market

Foreign exchange ; Microeconomics

Which economic model for a water-efficient Europe? Report of a CEPS Task Force. CEPS Task Force Report, 27 November 2012

This CEPS Task Force Report focuses on how to improve water efficiency in Europe, notably in public supply, households, agriculture, energy and manufacturing as well as across sectors. It presents a number of recommendations on how to make better use of economic policy instruments to sustainably manage the EU’s water resources. Published in the run-up to the European Commission’s “Blueprint to Safeguard Europe’s Waters”, the report contributes to the policy deliberations in two ways. First, by assessing the viability of economic policy instruments, it addresses a major shortcoming that has so far prevented the 2000 EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) from becoming fully effective in practice: the lack of appropriate, coherent and effective instruments in (some) member states. Second, as the Task Force report is the result of an interactive process involving a variety of stakeholders, it is able to point to the key differences in interpreting and applying WFD principles that have led to a lack of policy coherence across the EU and to offer some pragmatic advice on moving forward

Overcoming financing constraints to corporate expansion: evidence from a company in an emerging Islamic market

The sourcing of low-cost finance to facilitate corporate expansion on competitive terms is a major challenge to firms from emerging markets. There are additional constraints in Islamic markets as financial instruments must adhere to shari’ya law. This paper examines the approach taken by the Sudan Telecommunications Company (Sudatel) to obtain cost effective equity financing using secondary listings on multiple Middle East and North Africa (MENA) stock exchanges. We compare the costs of equity for Sudatel stock on the Sudan and Abu Dhabi Exchanges, and compare these figures with those for Sudatel’s two main regional competitors. Furthermore, we highlight the risk-return trade-off faced by investors in Sudatel stock on both Exchanges, and provide evidence of the potential benefits to investors from the overseas listin

Economic Reforms and Constitutional Transition

This paper investigates the relationship between economic reforms and constitutional transition, which has been neglected by many transition economists. It is argued that assessment of reform performance might be very misleading if it is not recognized that economic reforms are just a small part of large scale of constitutional transition. Rivalry and competition between states and between political forces within each country are the driving forces for constitutional transition. We use Russia as an example of economic reforms associated with constitutional transition and China as an example of economic reforms in the absence of constitutional transition to examine features and problems in the two patterns of transition. It is concluded that under political monopoly of the ruling party, economic transition will be hijacked by state opportunism. Dual track approach to economic transition may generate very high long-term cost of constitutional transition that might well outweigh its short-term benefit of buying out the vested interests.constitutional transition, economic reform, division of labor, debate of shock therapy vs gradualism, debate of convergence vs institutional innovation