Block Trade Contracting

Joshua Mollner, christoph frei , Markus Baldauf - Jun 12, 2024

Working Paper No.  00095-02

We study the optimal execution problem in a principal-agent setting. A client contracts to purchase from a dealer. The dealer hedges, buying from the market, creating temporary and permanent price impact. The client chooses a contract, which specifies payment as a function of market prices; hidden action precludes conditioning on the dealer’s hedging trades. We show the first-best benchmark is theoretically achievable with an unrestricted contract set. We then consider weighted-average-price contracts, which are commonly used. In the continuous-time limit, the optimal weighting entails a constant density at interior times and discrete masses at the extremes.

Published:Journal of Financial Economics,2024,160(),103901-

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Previous Versions

Block Trade Contracting

00095-01


Principal Trading Arrangements: Optimality under Temporary and Permanent Price Impact

00095-00