Transparency — An Empirical Study Using Taiwan Stock Exchange Data

Abstract

Understanding the impacts of transparency in capital markets is important for determining the trading mechanism and for evaluating market efficiency and market fairness. The recent reforms covering trade transparency on the Taiwan Stock Exchange give us an opportunity to address and examine the relevant arguments. Evidence from this study indicates that increasing trade transparency may create a more efficient market due to decreased effective spreads compared with before the event. Asymmetric information also declines after transparency is liberalized. However, the movement direction of the realized spread does not seem obvious or pronounced. The implication from our results is that the exact effects from trade transparency may be dependent on the stock market's structure itself.