Commonality in equity options liquidity: Evidence from NYSE LIFFE

This paper examines the commonality in liquidity for individual equity options trading at NYSE LIFFE. We use high-frequency data to construct a novel index of liquidity commonality and we find that it can explain a substantial proportion of the liquidity variation of individual options. The explanatory power of the common liquidity factor is more pronounced during periods of higher implied volatility at the market level. The common factor’s impact on individual options’ liquidity is found to depend on the options’ idiosyncratic characteristics, while there is limited evidence of systematic liquidity spillover effects among the NYSE LIFFE exchanges.