We develop an equilibrium model of debt maturity choice of firms, in the presence of fixed issuance costs in primary debt markets, and an over-the-counter secondary debt market with search frictions. Liquidity in this market is related to the ratio of buyers to sellers, which is determined in...

We show that Treasury security prices in the secondary market decrease significantly before subsequent auctions and recover shortly after. This price pattern implies a large issuance cost for the Treasury Department, which is estimated to be between 9 and 18 basis points of the auction size. For...

Financial market liquidity has become increasingly fragmented across multiple trading platforms. We propose an intuitive welfare-based market quality metric that can properly aggregate local market conditions across both securities and trading venues. Our analysis rests on a general equilibrium...