Electronic Trading in OTC Markets vs. Centralized Exchange

Abstract

We model a two-tiered market structure in which an investor can trade an asset on a trading platform with a set of dealers who in turn have access to an interdealer market. The investor's order is informative about the asset's payoff and dealers who were contacted by the investor use this information in the interdealer market. Increasing the number of contacted dealers lowers markups through competition but increases the dealers' costs of providing the asset through information leakage. We then compare a centralized market in which investors can trade among themselves in a central limit order book to a market in which investors have to use the electronic platform to trade the asset. With imperfect competition among dealers, investor welfare is higher in the centralized market if private values are strongly dispersed or if the mass of investors is large.

Keywords: OTC markets, RFQ, market design, electronic trading, dealer intermediation

JEL Classification: D44, D47, D82, G12, G14