The Role of U.S. Trading in Pricing Internationally Cross-Listed Stocks

Abstract

This paper addresses two issues: 1) where does price discovery occur for firms that are traded simultaneously in the U.S. and in their home markets and 2) what explains the differences across firms in the share of price discovery that occurs in the U.S? The answer to the first question is that the home market is typically where the majority of price discovery occurs, but there are significant exceptions to this rule and the nature of price discovery across international markets during the time of trading overlap is richer and more complex than previously realized. For the second question, the results provide strong support that liquidity is an important factor. For a particular firm, the greater the liquidity of U.S. trading relative to the home market, the greater the role for U.S. price discovery.