Information Flow and Network of Interpersonal Ties in the Fixed-Income Market

The forty-five trillion-dollar fixed-income market still makes little use of the electronic marketplace. Our research findings show this to be mainly due to the market structure of embedded interpersonal ties which allow participants to take advantage of information asymmetry for profit taking. This research-in-progress, based on ethnographic data and face-toface interviews with 72 fixed-income senior managers and traders from 20 financial institutions, provides a unique insight into the information flow and networks of interpersonal ties in a fixed income market for market makers.

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