Liquidity and Asset Returns Under Asymmetric Information and Imperfect Competition

We analyze how asymmetric information and imperfect competition affect liquidity and asset prices. Our model has three periods: Agents are identical in the first, become heterogeneous and trade in the second, and consume asset payoffs in the third. We show that asymmetric information in the second period raises ex ante expected asset returns in the first, comparing both to the case where all private signals are made public and to that where private signals are not observed. Imperfect competition can instead lower expected returns. Each imperfection can move common measures of illiquidity in opposite directions. The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com., Oxford University Press.