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"Liquidity Effects of Changes in a Pan-European Stock Index"

Adding or deleting a security to or from an index can influence the share price considerably. A possible explanation that has been brought forward in the literature is the liquidity hypothesis according to which an increase in liquidity after an addition is responsible for the observed rise in value. In the following paper, we examine liquidity effects on securities that have been added to or deleted from the pan-European index STOXX 50 between 1998 and 2003, using bid-ask spreads as indicators for liquidity. While there is a medium term price effect, bid-ask spreads do not change significantly due to the index addition or deletion. Regression analysis shows that the explanatory power of bid-ask spreads for the observed price effect is negligible.

As a consequence of our empirical findings, the liquidity hypothesis has to be rejected for the STOXX 50. This result, however, does not appear particularly surprising, as the STOXX 50 is composed of already highly liquid securities whose trading liquidity appears not to depend on membership in an international index. A possible explanation for the rejection of the liquidity hypothesis is that the applicability of the liquidity hypothesis hinges on the liquidity class of the stocks concerned before being added. Marginal increases of liquidity due to an index addition might decline with larger initial liquidity of the stocks added. Subsequent studies could focus on the particular shape of this "liquidity curve" of stocks.

Pape, Ulrich/Schmidt-Tank, Stephan: Liquidity Effects of Changes in a Pan-European Stock Index. Paper presented at the 11th Annual Meeting of the German Finance Association, Tübingen, October 1, 2004.

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