Oxera report: The design of equity trading markets in Europe

An economic analysis of price formation and market data services

There is an ongoing debate about the provision by stock exchanges of market data services. This debate often overlooks the links between market data services, trading and price formation, and the design of the equity trading market more generally.

One year on from the implementation of MiFID II, the objective of this report is to inform the debate on the design of equity trading markets in Europe—in particular, market data services—by providing an economic analysis of:

• the role of the price formation process;
• the impact of regulatory change on the market design of equity trading and price formation;
• the value chain for market data services;
• the impact of different charging structures for market data.