Recent literature shows how the destabilising e¤ect of portfolio insurance activity on the price of the underlying asset depends on the liquidity of the asset market. We build a simple model where market timers shift capital around asset markets in order to exploit gains from temporary excess-volatility of asset prices. In this way, market timers increase the liquidity of asset markets reducing the excess volatility, while they increase the cross-market correlation, whereas long-ranged financial contagion eventually occurs. We show how liquidity of asset markets, cross-market correlation and excess volatility of asset prices depend on structural parameters of asset markets.

The main objective of my three essays is to incorporate liquidity shocks and the linkages between the liquidity condition of financial markets into asset pricing and valuation models. The first essay focuses on the liquidity adjusted capital asset pricing model, while the second and the third essays examine the popular asset valuation model called the Fed model. The first essay investigates the pricing of the commonality risk in the U.S. stock market by using a more comprehensive market illiquidity measure that can reflect the liquidity condition of different asset markets. This measure is given by the yield difference between commercial paper and treasury bill. In addition, consistent with the definition of commonality risk, I form portfolios based on the sensitivity of each stock's illiquidity to the market-wide illiquidity. Using monthly data from January 1997 to December 2016 and the conditional version of the Liquidity-adjusted Capital Asset Pricing Model (LCAPM) estimated by the Dynamic Conditional Correlation approach, I find a significant commonality risk premium of 0.022% and 0.014% per year for 12-month and 24-month holding periods, respectively. This premium estimate is significantly higher than those found using the market illiquidity measure and estimation procedures from previous studies. These findings provide evidence that a security's easiness in terms of tradability at times of liquidity dry up is extremely important. It is also higher than the excess return associated with other forms of liquidity risk. In addition, the paper finds a variation in the estimated commonality risk premium over time, with values being higher during periods of market turmoil. Moreover, estimating the LCAPM with the yield difference between commercial paper and treasury bill as a measure of market illiquidity performs better in predicting returns for the low commonality risk portfolios. The second essay examines the inflation illusion hypothesis in explaining the high correlation between government bond yield and stock yield as implied by the Fed model. According to the inflation illusion hypothesis, there is mis-pricing in the stock market due to the failure of investors to adjust their cash flow expectation to inflation. This led to a co-movement in stock yield and government bond yield. I use the Gordon Growth model to determine the mis-pricing component in the stock market. In the next step, the correlation between bond yield and stock yield is estimated using the Asymmetric Generalized Dynamic Conditional Correlation (AG-DCC) model. Finally, I regress this correlation on mis-pricing and two other control variables, GDP and inflation. I use monthly data from January 1983 to December 2016. Consistent with the Fed model, the paper finds a significant positive correlation between the yield on government bonds and stock yield, with an average correlation of 0.942 - 0.997. However, in contrast to the inflation illusion hypothesis, mis-pricing in the stock market has an insignificant impact on this correlation. The third essay provides liquidity shocks contagion between the stock market and the corporate bond market as the driving force behind the high correlation between the yield on stocks and the yield on government bonds as implied by the Fed model. The idea is that when liquidity drops in the stock market, firms' credit risk rises because the deterioration in the liquidity of equities traded in the stock market increases the firms' default probability. Consequently, investors' preferences shift away from corporate bonds to government bonds. Higher demand for government bonds keeps their yield low, leading to a co-movement of government bond yield and stock yield. In order to test this liquidity-based explanation, the paper first examines the interdependence between liquidity in the stock and corporate bond markets using the Markov switching model, and a time series non-parametric technique called the Convergent Cross Mapping (CCM). In order to see the response of government bond yield and stock yield to liquidity shocks in the stock market, the study implements an Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model. Using monthly data from January 1997 to December 2016, the paper presents strong evidence of liquidity shocks transmission form the stock market to the corporate bond market. Furthermore, liquidity shocks in the stock market are found to have a significant impact on the stock yield. These findings support the illiquidity contagion explanation provided in this paper.

"The process by which securities are traded is very different from the idealized picture of a frictionless and self-equilibrating market offered by the typical finance textbook. This book offers a more accurate and authoritative take on this process. The book starts from the assumption that not everyone is present at all times simultaneously on the market, and that participants have quite diverse information about the security's fundamentals. As a result, the order flow is a complex mix of information and noise, and a consensus price only emerges gradually over time as the trading process evolves and the participants interpret the actions of other traders. Thus, a security's actual transaction price may deviate from its fundamental value, as it would be assessed by a fully informed set of investors. The book takes these deviations seriously, and explains why and how they emerge in the trading process and are eventually eliminated. The authors draw on a vast body of theoretical insights and empirical findings on security price formation that have come to form a well-defined field within financial economics known as "market microstructure." Focusing on liquidity and price discovery, the book analyzes the tension between the two, pointing out that when price-relevant information reaches the market through trading pressure rather than through a public announcement, liquidity may suffer. It also confronts many striking phenomena in securities markets and uses the analytical tools and empirical methods of market microstructure to understand them. These include issues such as why liquidity changes over time and differs across securities, why large trades move prices up or down, and why these price changes are subsequently reversed, and why we observe temporary deviations from asset fair values"--

Little progress has been made so far in addressing—in a comprehensive way—the externalities caused by impact of the interconnectedness within institutions and markets on funding and market liquidity risk within financial systems. The Systemic Risk-adjusted Liquidity (SRL) model combines option pricing with market information and balance sheet data to generate a probabilistic measure of the frequency and severity of multiple entities experiencing a joint liquidity event. It links a firm’s maturity mismatch between assets and liabilities impacting the stability of its funding with those characteristics of other firms, subject to individual changes in risk profiles and common changes in market conditions. This approach can then be used (i) to quantify an individual institution’s time-varying contribution to system-wide liquidity shortfalls and (ii) to price liquidity risk within a macroprudential framework that, if used to motivate a capital charge or insurance premia, provides incentives for liquidity managers to internalize the systemic risk of their decisions. The model can also accommodate a stress testing approach for institution-specific and/or general funding shocks that generate estimates of systemic liquidity risk (and associated charges) under adverse scenarios.

No sooner had the Asian crisis broken out in 1997 than the witch-hunt started. With great indignation every Asian economy pointed fingers. They were innocent bystanders. The fundamental reason for the crisis was this or that - most prominently contagion - but also the decline in exports of the new commodities (high-tech goods), the steep rise of the dollar, speculators, etc. The prominent question, of course, is whether contagion could really have been the key factor and, if so, what are the channels and mechanisms through which it operated in such a powerful manner. The question is obvious because until 1997, Asia's economies were generally believed to be immensely successful, stable and well managed. This question is of great importance not only in understanding just what happened, but also in shaping policies. In a world of pure contagion, i.e. when innocent bystanders are caught up and trampled by events not of their making and when consequences go far beyond ordinary international shocks, countries will need to look for better protective policies in the future. In such a world, the international financial system will need to change in order to offer better preventive and reactive policy measures to help avoid, or at least contain, financial crises.

Theories of Liquidity surveys the theoretical literature on market liquidity focusing on six main imperfections studied in that literature: participation costs, transaction costs, asymmetric information, imperfect competition, funding constraints, and search. The authors address three basic questions in the context of each imperfection: (a) how to measure illiquidity, i.e., the lack of liquidity, (b) how illiquidity relates to underlying market imperfections and other asset characteristics, and (c) how illiquidity affects expected asset returns. The theoretical literature on market liquidity often employs different modeling assumptions when studying different imperfections. Instead of surveying this literature in a descriptive manner, Theories of Liquidity uses a common, unified model to study all six imperfections that are considered, and for each imperfection addresses the three basic questions within that model. The model generates many of the key results shown in the literature. It also serves as a point of reference for surveying other results derived in different or more complicated settings, and for describing fruitful areas for future research.This survey is related to both market microstructure and asset pricing. It emphasizes fundamental market imperfections covered in the market microstructure literature, and examines how these relate to empirical measures of illiquidity used in that literature. It also examines how market imperfections affect expected asset returns - an asset-pricing exercise - and, in that sense, connects the two areas of research.

This paper explains specifics of stress testing at the IMF. After a brief section on the evolution of stress tests at the IMF, the paper presents the key steps of an IMF staff stress test. They are followed by a discussion on how IMF staff uses stress tests results for policy advice. The paper concludes by identifying remaining challenges to make stress tests more useful for the monitoring of financial stability and an overview of IMF staff work program in that direction. Stress tests help assess the resilience of financial systems in IMF member countries and underpin policy advice to preserve or restore financial stability. This assessment and advice are mainly provided through the Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP). IMF staff also provide technical assistance in stress testing to many its member countries. An IMF macroprudential stress test is a methodology to assess financial vulnerabilities that can trigger systemic risk and the need of systemwide mitigating measures. The definition of systemic risk as used by the IMF is relevant to understanding the role of its stress tests as tools for financial surveillance and the IMF’s current work program. IMF stress tests primarily apply to depository intermediaries, and, systemically important banks.

In a recently released New York Fed staff report, we present a forward-looking monitoring program to identify and track time-varying sources of systemic risk.