Stock Liquidity and Real Economic Activities-Evidence from Karachi Stock Exchange

Stock markets play a significant role for investors and financial institutions and help them to in order to mobilize their finances and provide platform to buy and sell their stock. In any country stock market has a significant effect on the economy as it regulates money and debts. This helps in focusing on the allocation of our investment and resources efficiently. This further enhances the structure of stock market and guide future direction for investment opportunities. Equity market is considered as a source of capital for the investors and financial organizations. The aim of our is to investigate the Karachi stock market liquidity using firm level data describing the real economic activity of the country by controlling equity and non equity factors. For this purpose, alternative liquidity proxies are applied to economic indicators by taking the stock sample from KSE during the tenure of last years (1988-2018). The tools for measuring illiquidity measures Amihud (ILR) and the relative spread (RS) were used whereas Turnover (TUR) and the volume of trading (VTR) are used to measure liquidity. The sample for this study consists of firms' stocks listed on the Karachi Stock Exchange for calculating the liquidity proxies and real economic activity, daily stocks prices data and returns, total number of shares and trading volume of each company. For measuring real economic activity the macro variables used are: Real GDP (RGDP), Real consumption (RC), Real investment (RI)and the unemployment rate (UnR). Hypotheses were developed according to the objective of the study. Standard linear and nonlinear models for the GDP calculation and regression model for developing the correlation between stock market liquidity and various economic factors. Jarque-Bera test, causality tests were applied to find correlation between stock market liquidity and real economic activity factors. The result of this study suggested that stock market liquidity has a significant effect on real economic activity in Karachi stock exchange market