The way in which securities are traded is very different from the idealized picture of a frictionless and self-equilibrating market offered by the typical finance textbook. Market Liquidity offers a more accurate and authoritative take on liquidity and price discovery.

Preface ; Introduction ; 0.1 What is this book about? ; 0.2 Why should we care? ; 0.3 Some puzzles ; 0.4 The three dimensions of liquidity ; 0.4.1 Market liquidity ; 0.4.2 Funding liquidity ; 0.4.3 Monetary liquidity ; I Institutions ; 1 Market structure and trading mechanics ; 1.1 Introduction ; 1.2 Limit order markets and dealer markets ; 1.2.1 Limit order markets ; 1.2.2 Dealer markets ; 1.2.3 Hybrid markets ; 1.2.4 Market transparency ; 1.3 Does market structure matter? ; 1.4 Evolution of market structure ; 1.4.1 Who makes the rules? ; 1.4.2 Competition between exchanges ; 1.4.3 Automation ; 1.5 Further reading ; 1.6 Exercises ; 2 Measuring liquidity ; 2.1 Introduction ; 2.2 Measures of the spread ; 2.2.1 The quoted spread ; 2.2.2 The effective spread ; 2.2.3 The realized spread ; 2.3 Other measures of implicit trading costs ; 2.3.1 Volume-weighted average price ; 2.3.2 Measures based on price impact ; 2.3.3 Non-trading measures ; 2.3.4 Measures based on return covariance ; 2.4 Implementation shortfall ; 2.5 Hands-on estimation of transaction costs ; 2.6 Further reading ; 2.7 Appendix ; 2.8 Exercises ; 3 Order flow, liquidity and securities price dynamics ; 3.1 Introduction ; 3.2 Price dynamics and the efficient market hypothesis ; 3.3 Price dynamics with informative order flow ; 3.3.1 The Glosten-Milgrom model ; 3.3.2 The determinants of the bid-ask spread ; 3.3.3 How do dealers revise their quotes? ; 3.3.4 Price discovery ; 3.3.5 The implications for price movements and volatility ; 3.4 Price dynamics with order-processing costs ; 3.4.1 Bid-ask spread with order-processing costs ; 3.4.2 Price dynamics with order-processing and adverse-selection costs ; 3.5 Price dynamics with inventory risk ; 3.5.1 A two-period model ; 3.5.2 A multi-period model ; 3.5.3 The dynamics of prices and inventories ; 3.6 The full picture ; 3.7 Further reading ; 3.8 Exercises ; 4 Trade size and market depth ; 4.1 Introduction ; 4.2 Market depth under asymmetric information ; 4.2.1 Learning from order size ; 4.2.2 Perfectly competitive dealers ; 4.2.3 Informed trader's order placement strategy ; 4.2.4 Imperfectly competitive dealers ; 4.3 Market depth with inventory risk ; 4.3.1 Perfectly competitive dealers ; 4.3.2 Imperfectly competitive dealers ; 4.4 Further reading ; 4.5 Appendix A ; 4.6 Appendix B ; 4.7 Exercises ; 5 Estimating the determinants of market illiquidity ; 5.1 Introduction ; 5.2 Price impact regressions ; 5.2.1 Without inventory costs ; 5.2.2 With inventory costs ; 5.3 Measuring the permanent impact of trades ; 5.4 Probability of informed trading (PIN) ; 5.5 Further reading ; 5.6 Exercises ; II Market Design and Regulation ; 6 Limit order book markets ; 6.1 Introduction ; 6.2 A model of the limit order book (LOB) ; 6.2.1 The market environment ; 6.2.2 Execution probability and order submission cost ; 6.2.3 Limit order trading with informed trading ; 6.3 Design of LOB markets ; 6.3.1 Tick size ; 6.3.2 Priority rules ; 6.3.3 Hybrid LOB markets ; 6.4 The make or take decision in LOB markets ; 6.4.1 Risk of being picked off and risk of non execution ; 6.4.2 Bid-ask spreads and execution risk ; 6.4.3 Bid-ask spreads and volatility ; 6.4.4 Indexed limit orders, monitoring, and algorithmic trading ; 6.4.5 Order flow and the state of the LOB ; 6.5 Further reading ; 6.6 Exercises ; 7 Market fragmentation ; 7.1 Introduction ; 7.2 The Costs of fragmentation ; 7.2.1 Information effects ; 7.2.2 Risk-sharing effects ; 7.2.3 Competition among liquidity suppliers ; 7.2.4 Fragmentation and the broker-client relationship ; 7.3 Liquidity externalities ; 7.3.1 Liquidity begets liquidity ; 7.3.2 Low-liquidity traps ; 7.4 The benefits of fragmentation ; 7.4.1 Curbing the pricing power of exchanges ; 7.4.2 Sharper competition among liquidity providers ; 7.4.3 Trade-throughs ; 7.5 Regulation ; 7.5.1 Regulation NMS ; 7.5.2 MiFID ; 7.6 Further reading ; 7.7 Exercises ; 8 Market transparency ; 8.1 Pre-trade transparency ; 8.1.1 Quote transparency and competition between dealers ; 8.1.2 Quote transparency and execution risk ; 8.1.3 Order flow transparency ; 8.2 Post-trade transparency ; 8.3 Revealing trading motives ; 8.4 Why are markets so opaque? ; 8.4.1 Rent extraction and lobbying ; 8.4.2 Opacity can withstand competition ; 8.4.3 The bright side of opacity ; 8.5 Further reading ; 8.6 Exercises ; III Implications for Asset Prices, Financial Crises and Corporate Policies ; 9 Liquidity and Asset Prices ; 9.1 Introduction ; 9.2 Illiquidity and asset prices ; 9.2.1 The illiquidity premium ; 9.2.2 Clientele effects ; 9.2.3 Evidence ; 9.2.4 Asymmetric information, illiquidity and asset returns ; 9.2.5 Illiquidity premia in OTC markets ; 9.3 Liquidity risk and asset prices ; 9.4 Liquidity and limits to arbitrage ; 9.4.1 Risk of early liquidation as a limit to arbitrage ; 9.4.2 Limited speculative capital as a barrier to arbitrage ; 9.4.3 Implications for market making and liquidity crises ; 9.5 Correlated order flow and noise trader risk ; 9.6 Further reading ; 9.7 Appendix. The derivation of the search model ; 9.8 Exercises ; 10 Liquidity, price discovery and corporate policies ; 10.1 Introduction ; 10.2 Market liquidity and corporate investment ; 10.3 Market liquidity and corporate governance ; 10.4 Price discovery, corporate investment and executive compensation ; 10.4.1 Stock prices and investment allocation ; 10.4.2 Stock prices and executive compensation ; 10.5 Corporate policies and market liquidity ; 10.5.1 Listing and cross-listing ; 10.5.2 Designated market makers ; 10.5.3 Disclosure policy ; 10.5.4 Capital structure ; 10.6 Further reading ; 10.7 Exercises ; References ; Index

Market Liquidity by Professors Foucault, Pagano and Roell is a wonderful addition to the literature on how markets work; why, sometimes, they don't work as we might wish; and how this affects regulation and corporate decision making. The book is rich in detail, covering the institutional structure of financial markets and the economic and statistical models we use to understand them. While structured as a textbook, it can be read in different ways. Those less interested in the mathematical details will profit from the beautifully written description of the models, some of which are new, and their economic lessons.