This paper studies the market quality of an internalization system which is designed as part of an open limit order book (the Xetra system operated by Deutsche Börse AG). The internalization sys-tem (Xetra BEST) guarantees a price improvement over the inside spread in the Xetra order book. We...

Using data from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange we analyze price formation and liquidity in a non-anonymous environment with similarities to the floor of the NYSE. Our main hypothesis is that the non-anonymity allows the specialist to assess the probability that a trader trades on the basis of...

Easley / Kiefer / O'Hara / Paperman (1996) (EKOP) have proposed an empirical methodology that allows to estimate the probability of informed trading and that has subsequently been used to address a wide range of issues in market microstructure. The data needed for estimation is the number of...

Deutsche Börse AG plans to introduce a system (Xetra Best) allowing brokers and brokerdealers to internalize the orders of retail customers. Further, Xetra Best supports payment for order flow arrangements. Both internalization and payment for order flow may be detrimental to market quality....

Exchanges in Europe are in a process of consolidation. After the failure of the proposed merger between Deutsche Börse and Euronext, these two groups are likely to become the nuclei for further mergers and co-operation with currently independent exchanges. A decision for one of the groups...

We analyze the dynamics of liquidity in Xetra, an electronic open limit order book. We use the Exchange Liquidity Measure (XLM), a measure of the cost of a roundtrip trade of given size V. This measure captures the price and the quantity dimension of liquidity. We present descriptive statistics,...

To resolve the IPO underpricing puzzle it is essential to analyze who knows what when during the issuing process. In Germany, broker-dealers make a market in IPOs during the subscription period. We examine these pre-issue prices and find that they are highly informative. They are closer to the...

An vielen Börsen sind heute elektronische Handelssysteme im Einsatz, die nach dem Auktionsprinzip funktionieren. Limitierte Aufträge werden dabei in einem Orderbuch zusammengefaßt, das von den Handelsteilnehmern eingesehen werden kann. In vielen Handelssystemen (darunter Xetra) werden dabei...

Wenn Banken und Makler Kauf- oder Verkaufsaufträge ihrer Kunden nicht an die zentrale Börse weiterleiten, sondern eine Ausführung gegen das eigene (interne) Orderbuch vornehmen, so spricht man von einer „Internalisierung“ der Kundenorder. Dieses Vorgehen wird in der Europäischen Union...

This paper presents the most extensive analysis of liquidity in the German equity market so far. We examine the evolution of liquidity over time, the determinants of liquidity, and commonality across liquidity measures and countries. We make use of a new publicly available dataset, the Market...