Which stock exchanges are more attractive? The competition analysis of listing and trading performance

Abstract

With the globalization of capital markets, stock exchanges around the world have faced their most challenging era since 2005. While the traditional role of the stock exchange should evolve by enforcing competitive advantage, as the heart of modern capital markets, stock exchanges give rise to both capital demand outflows and capital supply inflows, and both of these have to be taken into consideration. What is it that makes some stock markets more attractive than others from the viewpoint of firms as well as from the viewpoint of investors? This paper focuses on the stock exchanges' performance from an international perspective by combining both the listing competition and trading competition aspects using data for the world's 45 largest stock exchanges. The exchange-specific performances that both take and do not take a country's specific financial regulatory regime into consideration are evaluated. In addition, a competition matrix is designed to help the managerial authorities of stock exchanges around the world to position themselves within the industry.