IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/irvfin/v25y2025i4ne70047.html

Quote Limits Rule and Stock Market Efficiency: Evidence From a Regression Discontinuity Design

Author

Listed:
  • Dayong Lv
  • Yaping Zhou
  • Yan Jiang

Abstract

On April 10, 2023, China's Main Board stock market implemented a new quote limits rule, restricting the range of permissible order prices. Utilizing a regression discontinuity design (RDD), this study investigates the causal effect of this rule on stock market efficiency. We find that the rule leads to a significant reduction in pricing errors, indicating improved market efficiency. In addition, the rule is associated with a decrease in medium‐sized orders, fewer large price jumps, and a lower probability of end‐of‐day manipulation, suggesting that the rule improves market efficiency primarily by constraining manipulative trading activities from financially advantaged investors (e.g., institutional investors). Consistent with this manipulation‐curbing explanation, the rule's positive impact is more pronounced for small‐capitalization and low‐liquidity stocks, which are typically more vulnerable to price manipulation. Our findings provide robust causal evidence on the efficacy of quote limits in mitigating stock price manipulation and offer valuable regulatory insights for emerging markets.

Suggested Citation

  • Dayong Lv & Yaping Zhou & Yan Jiang, 2025. "Quote Limits Rule and Stock Market Efficiency: Evidence From a Regression Discontinuity Design," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 25(4), December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:irvfin:v:25:y:2025:i:4:n:e70047
    DOI: 10.1111/irfi.70047
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/irfi.70047
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/irfi.70047?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lucas W. Davis, 2008. "The Effect of Driving Restrictions on Air Quality in Mexico City," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(1), pages 38-81, February.
    2. Ng, Lilian & Wu, Fei, 2007. "The trading behavior of institutions and individuals in Chinese equity markets," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(9), pages 2695-2710, September.
    3. Prasanna L Tantri, 2018. "Contagious Effects of a Political Intervention in Debt Contracts: Evidence Using Loan-Level Data," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(11), pages 4556-4592.
    4. Bruce N. Lehmann and David M. Modest., 1994. "Trading and Liquidity on the Tokyo Stock Exchange: A Bird's Eye View," Research Program in Finance Working Papers RPF-234, University of California at Berkeley.
    5. Liu, Jie & Wu, Chonglin & Yuan, Lin & Liu, Jia, 2022. "Opening price manipulation and its value influences," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    6. Michael L. Anderson, 2014. "Subways, Strikes, and Slowdowns: The Impacts of Public Transit on Traffic Congestion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(9), pages 2763-2796, September.
    7. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February.
    8. Huang, Yen-Sheng & Fu, Tze-Wei & Ke, Mei-Chu, 2001. "Daily price limits and stock price behavior: evidence from the Taiwan stock exchange," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 263-288, July.
    9. Titman, Sheridan & Wei, Chishen & Zhao, Bin, 2022. "Corporate actions and the manipulation of retail investors in China: An analysis of stock splits," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(3), pages 762-787.
    10. Maximilian Auffhammer & Ryan Kellogg, 2011. "Clearing the Air? The Effects of Gasoline Content Regulation on Air Quality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2687-2722, October.
    11. Kim, Kenneth & Rhee, S Ghon, 1997. "Price Limit Performance: Evidence from the Tokyo Stock Exchange," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(2), pages 885-899, June.
    12. Ole E. Barndorff-Nielsen & Neil Shephard, 2006. "Econometrics of Testing for Jumps in Financial Economics Using Bipower Variation," Journal of Financial Econometrics, Oxford University Press, vol. 4(1), pages 1-30.
    13. Guojun He & Shaoda Wang & Bing Zhang, 2020. "Watering Down Environmental Regulation in China," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(4), pages 2135-2185.
    14. Deb, Saikat Sovan & Kalev, Petko S. & Marisetty, Vijaya B., 2010. "Are price limits really bad for equity markets?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(10), pages 2462-2471, October.
    15. Ekkehart Boehmer & Juan (Julie) Wu, 2013. "Short Selling and the Price Discovery Process," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(2), pages 287-322.
    16. Chen, Zhian & Du, Jinmin & Li, Donghui & Ouyang, Rui, 2013. "Does foreign institutional ownership increase return volatility? Evidence from China," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 660-669.
    17. Carole Comerton-Forde & Tālis J. Putniņš, 2014. "Stock Price Manipulation: Prevalence and Determinants," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 18(1), pages 23-66.
    18. Lehmann, Bruce N & Modest, David M, 1994. "Trading and Liquidity on the Tokyo Stock Exchange: A Bird's Eye View," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(3), pages 951-984, July.
    19. George, Thomas J. & Hwang, Chuan-Yang, 1995. "Transitory Price Changes and Price-Limit Rules: Evidence from the Tokyo Stock Exchange," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 30(2), pages 313-327, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ahn, Hee-Joon & Cai, Jun & Hamao, Yasushi & Ho, Richard Y. K., 2002. "The components of the bid-ask spread in a limit-order market: evidence from the Tokyo Stock Exchange," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 399-430, November.
    2. Siyuan Tang, 2025. "Asymmetric effectiveness of price limits: evidence from a quasi-natural experiment," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 64(3), pages 1341-1389, April.
    3. Tang, Siyuan, 2023. "Price limit performance: New evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China's ChiNext market," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    4. James Brugler & Oliver Linton, 2014. "Single stock circuit breakers on the London Stock Exchange: do they improve subsequent market quality?," CeMMAP working papers CWP07/14, Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    5. Kitajima, Kiichi, 2022. "Passive investors and concentration of intraday liquidity: Evidence from the Tokyo Stock Exchange," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    6. Catherine Hausman & David S. Rapson, 2018. "Regression Discontinuity in Time: Considerations for Empirical Applications," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 10(1), pages 533-552, October.
    7. Ahn, Hee-Joon & Cai, Jun & Hamao, Yasushi & Ho, Richard Y.K., 2005. "Adverse selection, brokerage coverage, and trading activity on the Tokyo Stock Exchange," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 1483-1508, June.
    8. Katsuhiko Muramiya & Kazuhisa Otogawa & Tomomi Takada, 2008. "Abnormal Accrual, Informed Trader, and Long-Term Stock Return: Evidence from Japan," Discussion Paper Series 233, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University.
    9. Liu, Jie & Zhang, Jingru & Chen, Zhenshan, 2025. "The effect of stock market manipulation on investor behavioral bias," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 47(C).
    10. Martens, Martin & Steenbeek, Onno W., 2001. "Intraday trading halts in the Nikkei futures market," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 9(5), pages 535-561, November.
    11. Liu, Zhaoda & Hou, Wanyue & Li, Zixian & Shi, Peiyao, 2025. "Price limits, investor asset allocation, and price volatility: Evidence from China’s registration-based IPO reform," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    12. Dang, Hai-Anh H. & Trinh, Trong-Anh, 2021. "Does the COVID-19 lockdown improve global air quality? New cross-national evidence on its unintended consequences," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    13. Hsin, Chin-Wen & Peng, Shu-Cing, 2023. "Investor propensity to speculate and price delay in emerging markets," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    14. Gao, Shenghao & Liu, Jinzhao & Zhang, Qi & Zhou, Jun, 2023. "Stock hyping before auction-style SEOs: Are primary market investors misled?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 123-140.
    15. Chan, Soon Huat & Kim, Kenneth A. & Rhee, S. Ghon, 2005. "Price limit performance: evidence from transactions data and the limit order book," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 269-290, March.
    16. Purnendu Nath, 2005. "Are Price Limits Always Bad?," Journal of Emerging Market Finance, Institute for Financial Management and Research, vol. 4(3), pages 281-313, December.
    17. Lovett, Nicholas & Xue, Yuhan, 2022. "Rare homicides, criminal behavior, and the returns to police labor," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 194(C), pages 172-195.
    18. Zike Cao & Yingpeng Zhu & Gen Li & Liangfei Qiu, 2024. "Consequences of Information Feed Integration on User Engagement and Contribution: A Natural Experiment in an Online Knowledge-Sharing Community," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 35(3), pages 1114-1136, September.
    19. Farag, Hisham, 2015. "The influence of price limits on overreaction in emerging markets: Evidence from the Egyptian stock market," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 190-199.
    20. Farag, Hisham, 2013. "Price limit bands, asymmetric volatility and stock market anomalies: Evidence from emerging markets," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 85-97.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:irvfin:v:25:y:2025:i:4:n:e70047. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=1369-412X .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.