Literature Review and Hypotheses Development
Barclay and Smith (1988) were the first to consider the liquidity impact
of open market share repurchases. They propose two competing
hypotheses explaining the impact of share repurchases on liquidity: the
price support hypothesis and the information asymmetry hypothesis.
The price support hypothesis posits that a share repurchase improves
liquidity because repurchasing firm submits buy limit orders that
establish a lower bound on the bid price. This, in turns, helps support
a falling stock price. In contrast, the information asymmetry hypothesis
predicts that a share repurchase impairs liquidity. This is because
managers are better informed and they can use inside information to
trade against outsiders. During the share repurchase period, liquidity
costs are adjusted higher to reflect the fact that uninformed investors
are more exposed to higher probability of trading against informed
investors.