Constrained Liquidity Provision in Currency Markets

We study dealers’ liquidity provision in the currency market. We show that at times when dealers’ intermediation capacity is constrained their cost of liquidity provision increases disproportionately relative to dealer-provided volume. As a result, the elasticity of dealers’ liquidity provision weakens by at least 80% relative to periods when they are unconstrained. We identify constrained periods based on leverage ratios, Value-at-Risk measures, credit default spreads, and debt funding costs. We interpret our novel empirical findings within a parsimonious model that sheds light on the key mechanisms of how liquidity provision by dealers tends to weaken when intermediary constraints are tightening.