On the importance of timing specifications in market microstructure research [An article from: Journal of Financial Markets]

This digital document is a journal article from Journal of Financial Markets, published by Elsevier in 2006. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
This paper highlights the importance of timing specifications in empirical market microstructure studies. Small changes in the data matching process and the timing specification of economic variables can significantly alter the outcomes of empirical research. Using the methodology developed by Lee and Ready [1991. Journal of Finance 46(2) 733-746], we show that their ''5-second rule'' is not appropriate for matching quotes with transactions for NYSE stocks in the TAQ data set, and the prevailing quotes are the ones immediately before the trades. We demonstrate the significance of the timing specifications of economic variables using the Huang and Stoll [1997. Review of Financial Studies 10, 995-1034] spread decomposition model. Seemingly minor variations from the theoretical model result in severe biases in the estimated parameters. Correcting the timing errors provide much more realistic spread component estimates than those achieved in the literature.