ETF Competition and Market Quality

This paper examines competition between ETFs that hold nearly identical portfolios of securities. We provide evidence that incumbent-fund liquidity is negatively affected when a new ETF is added to an asset class. The degradation in liquidity is even more severe whenever both funds follow the same benchmark. We also document a decline in primary-market activity for the incumbent ETFs after the arrival of new competitors. Furthermore, increasing the number of funds in an asset class does not put downward pressure on fund management fees. Thus, the deterioration in market quality is not offset by decreasing costs of fund ownership