@article{0f3b6d497bf34a158f6954cbbd6b2670,
title = "Do municipal bond dealers give their customers 'fair and reasonable' pricing?",
abstract = "Municipal bonds exhibit considerable retail pricing variation, even for same-size trades of the same bond on the same day, and even from the same dealer. Markups vary widely across dealers. Trading strongly clusters on eighth price increments, and clustered trades exhibit higher markups. Yields are often lowered to just above salient numbers. Machine learning estimates exploiting the richness of the data show that dealers that use strategic pricing have systematically higher markups. Recent MSRB rules have had only a limited impact on markups. While a subset of dealers focus on best execution, many dealers appear focused on opportunistic pricing.",
keywords = "Municipal bonds, markups, price clustering, opportunistic pricing",
author = "Griffin, {John M.} and Hirschey, {Nicholas H.} and Samuel Kruger",
note = "Funding Information: John Griffin and Samuel Kruger are with the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin. Nicholas Hirschey is with the Nova School of Business and Economics, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa. We thank Scott Bauguess; Hank Bessembinder; Thummim Cho; Daniel Garrett; Patrick Herb; Edith Hotchkiss; Stacey Jacobson; Stefan Nagel (Editor); Dermot Murphy; Zhaogang Song; Norman Sch{\"u}rhoff; Chester Spatt; Kumar Venkataraman; Stephane Verani; two anonymous referees; an Associate Editor; and seminar participants at London Business School, HKUST, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the University of Texas, the Nova School of Business and Economics, the University of Melbourne, the 2019 Lone Star Finance Conference, the 2019 Northern Finance Association meeting, the 2019 Adam Smith Juniors Workshop, the 2020 American Finance Association meeting, the 2020 European Winter Finance Conference, the 2020 Midwest Finance Association meeting, and the 2021 Municipal Finance Workshop. We also thank Brady Wyllie for research support, and we are grateful for research support from London Business School, Integra Research Group, a University of Texas McCombs Research Excellence Grant, Nova School of Business and Economics, Funda{\c c}{\~a}o para a Ci{\^e}ncia e a Tecnologia (UIDB/00124/2020, UIDP/00124/2020, and Social Sciences DataLab ‐ PINFRA/22209/2016), POR Lisboa, and POR Norte (Social Sciences DataLab, PINFRA/22209/2016). Griffin is an owner of Integra Research Group, Integra FEC, and Integra REC, which engage in research and financial consulting on a variety of issues related to investigating fraud, including various types of bonds. Disclosure statement is available on website. Supplementary results can be found in an Internet Appendix , which is available in the online version of this article. The Journal of Finance Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2023 The Authors. The Journal of Finance published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Finance Association.",
year = "2023",
month = apr,
doi = "10.1111/jofi.13214",
language = "English",
volume = "78",
pages = "887--934",
journal = "The Journal of Finance",
issn = "0022-1082",
publisher = "Wiley",
number = "2",
}