This paper analyzes the Amihud (2002) measure of illiquidity and its role in asset pricing. It is shown first that the effect of illiquidity on asset pricing is clarified by using the turnover version of the Amihud measure and including firm size as a separate variable. When we decompose the...

Following the recent financial crisis, a number of commentators have suggested that liquidity disappears in falling markets. It is when investors try to convert assets to cash that a lack of liquidity is felt most acutely. In other words, investor sales receive lower liquidity than investor...

We estimate buy- and sell-order illiquidity measures (lambdas) for a comprehensive sample of NYSE stocks. We show that sell-order liquidity is priced more strongly than buy-order liquidity in the cross-section of equity returns. Indeed, our analysis indicates that the liquidity premium in...