Strains on Money Market Makers and Money Market Liquidity

Abstract

We analyze the trading book of a key market maker in the European unsecured money market and study the extent to which liquidity risks accumulated by this market maker affect his pricing of liquidity and the bid-ask-spread he quotes on unsecured borrowing and lending. We find that the larger the funding liquidity risk assumed by the market maker the higher the market price for liquidity and the higher his term premium. Furthermore, his bid-ask-spread and the sensitivity of his bid-ask-spread to the maturity of transactions increases as his assumed liquidity risk rises. This suggests that also in the unsecured money market funding constraints and funding risks of the market maker affect market liquidity in line with Gromp and Vayanos (2004) and Brunnermeier and Pedersen (2009).