Information acquisition in a limit order market

Abstract We model an infinite horizon trading game of a limit order market with informed traders. Agents with a private and common value motive for trade randomly arrive in a market and may either post prices (submit limit orders) or accept posted prices (submit market orders). If their orders have not executed, traders may reenter the market and thus solve a dynamic problem. We consider agents' incentive to acquire information. We characterize how information acquisition changes agents' strategies and demonstrate the effect of this on the efficiency of market prices. We demonstrate that for some costs of acquiring information, there are multiple equilibria in the information acquisition game. Finally, we demonstrate that information acquisition can make all agents worse off

Does AMD Spur Intel to Innovate More?

We estimate an equilibrium model of dynamic oligopoly with durable goods and endogenous innovation to examine the effect of competition on innovation in the personal computer microprocessor industry. Firms make dynamic pricing and investment decisions while consumers make dynamic upgrade decisions, anticipating product improvements and price declines. Consistent with Schumpeter, we find that the rate of innovation in product quality would be 4.2 percent higher without AMD present, though higher prices would reduce consumer surplus by $12 billion per year. Comparative statics illustrate the role of product durability and provide implications of the model for other industries.

Informed traders and limit order markets

We consider a dynamic limit order market in which traders optimally choose whether to acquire information about the asset and the type of order to submit. We numerically solve for the equilibrium and demonstrate that the market is a "volatility multiplier": prices are more volatile than the fundamental value of the asset. This effect increases when the fundamental value has high volatility and with asymmetric information across traders. Changes in the microstructure noise are negatively correlated with changes in the estimated fundamental value, implying that asset betas estimated from high-frequency data will be incorrect.Limit order market Informed traders Endogenous information acquisition Computational game

Equilibrium in a Dynamic Limit Order Market

We model a dynamic limit order market as a stochastic sequential game. Since the model is analytically intractable, we provide an algorithm based on Pakes and McGuire (2001) to find a stationary Markov-perfect equilibrium. Given the stationary equilibrium, we generate artificial time series and perform comparative dynamics. As we know the data generating process, we can compare transaction prices to the true value of the asset, as well as explicitly determine the welfare gains accruing to investors