Information linkages in a financial market with imperfect competition

Abstract

This study proposes a tractable imperfectly competitive economy where traders are socially connected with each other via an information network. We investigate the impact of information linkages on market equilibrium outcomes. In the linear-quadratic-normal framework, we first establish the existence and uniqueness of symmetric linear Bayesian Nash equilibrium. We then show that an increase of the level of information linkages decreases price impact, belief disagreement, return volatility and trading volume. Additionally, unlike the non-monotonicity results in large economies, we also show that increasing the level of information linkages always improves liquidity, increases price volatility, and decreases trading profits in our imperfectly competitive economy.