Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Transaction Sizes And Spreads: An Informational Approach, David Feldman, Thomas Henker, Robert Kohn, Yuewen Xiao

Thomas Henker

We introduce an informational approach (IA) for exploring association between variables, an alternative to the prevalent parametric, thus restrictive, regression analysis. The IA uses data to (non-parametrically) construct the joint distribution of variables. Then, it uses theory to develop restrictions on the joint distributions. These restrictions will typically be orderings of functions of conditional distributions induced by the joint distribution. Finally, it attempts refuting the restrictions. We implement IA examining the relation between trading sizes and spreads, a main concern. Following insights and results of Milgrom (1981), Feldman (2004), and Feldman and Winer (2004), we use NYSE data and kernel …