The 'Make or Take' Decision in an Electronic Market: Evidence on the Evolution of Liquidity

Abstract

This paper uses experimental asset markets to investigate the evolution of liquidity in an electronic limit order market. Our market setting includes salient features of electronic limit order markets, as well as informed traders and liquidity traders. We focus on the strategies of the traders, and how these are affected by trader type, characteristics of the market, and characteristics of the asset. We find that informed traders use more limit orders than do liquidity traders. Our main result is that liquidity provision shifts as trading progresses, with informed traders increasingly providing liquidity in markets. The change in the behavior of the informed traders seems to be in response to the dynamic adjustment of prices to information; they take (provide) liquidity when the value of their information is high (low). Thus, a market-making role emerges endogenously in our electronic markets and is ultimately adopted by the traders who are least subject to adverse selection when placing limit orders.

Keywords: Market microstructure, experimental economics, experiments, electronic markets, limit order book, liquidity, continuous auctions, limit orders, trading strategies, informed traders, information asymmetry

JEL Classification: G10, D44, D82, C90