Activism, Strategic Trading, and Liquidity

48 Pages Posted: 5 Dec 2016 Last revised: 22 Jul 2023

See all articles by Kerry Back

Kerry Back

Rice University - Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business

Pierre Collin-Dufresne

Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne; Swiss Finance Institute; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Vyacheslav Fos

Boston College - Department of Finance; European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI); Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Tao Li

City University of Hong Kong (CityU) - Department of Economics & Finance

Alexander Ljungqvist

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); Swedish House of Finance; European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI)

Multiple version iconThere are 3 versions of this paper

Date Written: December 2016

Abstract

We analyze dynamic trading by an activist investor who can expend costly effort to affect firm value. We obtain the equilibrium in closed form for a general activism technology, including both binary and continuous outcomes. Variation in parameters can produce either positive or negative relations between market liquidity and economic efficiency, depending on the activism technology and model parameters. Two results that contrast with the previous literature are that (a) the relation between market liquidity and economic efficiency is independent of the activist's initial stake for a broad set of activism technologies and (b) an increase in noise trading can reduce market liquidity, because it increases uncertainty about the activist's trades (the activist trades in the opposite direction of noise traders) and thereby increases information asymmetry about the activist's intentions.

Suggested Citation

Back, Kerry and Collin-Dufresne, Pierre and Fos, Vyacheslav and Li, Tao and Ljungqvist, Alexander and Ljungqvist, Alexander, Activism, Strategic Trading, and Liquidity (December 2016). NBER Working Paper No. w22893, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2880331

Kerry Back (Contact Author)

Rice University - Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business ( email )

6100 South Main Street
P.O. Box 1892
Houston, TX 77005-1892
United States

Pierre Collin-Dufresne

Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne ( email )

Quartier UNIL-Dorigny, Bâtiment Extranef, # 211
40, Bd du Pont-d'Arve
CH-1015 Lausanne, CH-6900
Switzerland

Swiss Finance Institute

c/o University of Geneva
40, Bd du Pont-d'Arve
CH-1211 Geneva 4
Switzerland

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Vyacheslav Fos

Boston College - Department of Finance ( email )

Carroll School of Management
140 Commonwealth Avenue
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467-3808
United States

European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) ( email )

c/o the Royal Academies of Belgium
Rue Ducale 1 Hertogsstraat
1000 Brussels
Belgium

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) ( email )

London
United Kingdom

Tao Li

City University of Hong Kong (CityU) - Department of Economics & Finance ( email )

83 Tat Chee Avenue
Kowloon
Hong Kong

Alexander Ljungqvist

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

London
United Kingdom

Swedish House of Finance ( email )

Drottninggatan 98
111 60 Stockholm
Sweden

European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI)

c/o the Royal Academies of Belgium
Rue Ducale 1 Hertogsstraat
1000 Brussels
Belgium

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