Open issues in testing liquidity in frontier financial markets: The case of Serbia

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of illiquidity and liquidity risk on expected asset returns in the Serbian stock market. For this market we estimate the conditional Liquidity-adjusted Capital Asset Pricing Model (LCAPM) of Acharya and Pedersen (2005). We use daily data for the period from 2005-2009. While the method developed is applicable in other markets this is the first paper that tests the LCAPM model in the case of Serbia. Liquidity risks are allowed to be timevarying. We find that for the Serbian market as a frontier market illiquidity and liquidity risk significantly impact price formation. For such a market the LCAPM may indeed be a good tool for realistic assessment of the expected asset returns.