Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

UiS Working Papers in Economics and Finance,
University of Stavanger

No 2012/12: The liquidity of the Secondary Market for Debt Securities in Norway

Ketil Rakkestad, Johannes Skjeltorp and Bernt Arne Ødegaard ()
Additional contact information
Ketil Rakkestad: Norges Bank
Johannes Skjeltorp: Norges Bank
Bernt Arne Ødegaard: University of Stavanger, Postal: University of Stavanger, NO-4036 Stavanger, Norway

Abstract: The main purpose of this project is to examine the liquidity and activity in the secondary market for Norwegian debt securities. The second objective is to determine whether the activity and data availability is sufficient to construct indicators that can be used to monitor the state of Norwegian bond market on a regular basis. To this end we examine a detailed data set provided to us by Oslo B{\o}rs Informasjon (OBI) containing the complete record of daily trading activity in all exchange listed fixed income securities in Norway over the period 1999-2011. Due to the low trading activity in corporate securities and the fact that a large part of trading in corporate debt is conducted off market (OTC), makes it challenging to produce reliable liquidity indicators. In particular, order based liquidity measures (such as the bid ask spread), that typically are superior measures of liquidity supply, are in most cases not possible to construct due to the lack of two sided quote observation. On the other hand, due to the reporting rules of all OTC trades to the Oslo Stock Exchange, trade based measures of liquidity (such as the Amihud ILR) are more informative.

Keywords: Liquidity; Norwegian Bond Market

JEL-codes: G10

31 pages, July 17, 2012

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uis_wps_2012_12_rakkestad_skjeltorp_odegaard.pdf PDF-file 

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