Lighting Up the Dark: Liquidity in the German Corporate Bond Market

Abstract

We study market liquidity in the markets for German and US corporate bonds, providing a comparative analysis of liquidity in two over-the-counter (OTC) bond markets with different characteristics. We employ a unique regulatory dataset of transactions by German financial institutions from 2008 to 2014 to find, first, that overall trading activity is much lower in the German market than in the US. Second, much like in the US, the determinants of German corporate bond liquidity are in line with OTC-market search theories. Third—and surprisingly—frequently traded German bonds have transaction costs that are 39–61 basis points lower than a matched sample of bonds in the US. We relate our results to a number of structural market differences that may explain our findings, including differences in market structure, transparency, and the tax and legal environment.