NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

Hedge Funds as Liquidity Providers: Evidence from the Lehman Bankruptcy

George O. Aragon, Philip E. Strahan

NBER Working Paper No. 15336*
Issued in September 2009
NBER Program(s):   AP

Using the September 15, 2008 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers as an exogenous shock to funding costs, we show that hedge funds act as liquidity providers. Hedge funds using Lehman as prime broker could not trade after the bankruptcy, and these funds failed twice as often as otherwise-similar funds after September 15 (but not before). Stocks traded by the Lehman-connected hedge funds in turn experienced greater declines in market liquidity following the bankruptcy than other stocks; and, the effect was larger for ex ante illiquid stocks. We conclude that shocks to traders’ funding liquidity reduce the market liquidity of the assets that they trade.

You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery.

Information about Free Papers

You should expect a free download if you are a subscriber, a corporate associate of the NBER, a journalist, a site with your domain name in ".GOV", or a resident of nearly any developing country or transition economy.

If you usually get free papers at work/university but do not at home, you can either connect to your work VPN or proxy (if any) or elect to have a link to the paper emailed to your work email address below. The email address must be connected to a subscribing college, university, or other subscribing institution. Gmail and other free email addresses will not have access.

E-mail:

Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX

 
Publications
Activities
Meetings
Data
People
About

National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138; 617-868-3900; email: info@nber.org