Price Transparency in the U.S. Corporate Bond Markets
批评三项近期研究发现TRACE交易报告系统虽促进价格发现，但因混淆交易成本与佣金、忽视机会成本，实际上损害了市场流动性，对投资者弊大于利。
Three prominent academic studies, all recently published, found that corporate bond investors have benefited from the post-trade transparency that has resulted from the reporting requirements mandated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine, or TRACE. The author argues that all three studies suffer from similar methodological shortcomings, such as confusing dealer mark-ups with commissions in measuring transactions costs and overlooking the far more relevant trading opportunity costs. And although TRACE may have facilitated price discovery, the author asserts that it is at the expense of quantity discovery and, thus, has incrementally decreased market liquidity. The SEC's implementation of TRACE was undoubtedly well intentioned, but it appears more harm than good was done to the investors it was meant to benefit. <bold>TOPICS:</bold> <ext-link>Exchanges/markets/clearinghouses</ext-link>, <ext-link>counterparty risk</ext-link>, <ext-link>VAR and use of alternative risk measures of trading risk</ext-link>