The price leadership share: a new measure of price discovery in financial markets

We propose a new measure to establish price leadership among multiple related price series using a multivariate Markov chain model. This new measure, the price leadership share (PLS), can easily be calculated when price series are related but not fully cointegrated (e.g. there is a fractional cointegration and the unit root test fails) and with more than two price series simultaneously, offering advantages over the existing price discovery measures. In addition, we propose a price leadership concentration index to help the comparative analysis. The measure is tested on six gold contracts, including spot, futures, and ETF, with a global coverage over a 2-year period. Results show that gold futures contracts, mainly the US contract (CME futures), have a major role in the price discovery function confirming the previous literature’s findings. Overall, the PLS measure overcomes the limits of other existing price discovery measures.