Optimal contracts for delegated order execution
Author(s)
Larsson, Martin
Muhle‐Karbe, Johannes
Weber, Benjamin
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
We determine the optimal affine contract for a client who delegates their order execution to a dealer. Existence and uniqueness are established for general linear price impact dynamics of the dealer's trades. Explicit solutions are available for the model of Obizhaeva and Wang, for example, and a simple gradient descent algorithm is applicable in general. The optimal contract allows the client to almost achieve the first-best performance without any agency conflicts for many reasonable parameter values. Common trading arrangements arise as limiting cases. In particular, optimal contracts for many reasonable model parameters resemble the “fixing contract” common in FX markets, in that they only incorporate market prices briefly before the conclusion of the trade. Price manipulation by the dealer is avoided by only putting a sufficiently small weight on these prices, and complementing this part of the contract with a sufficiently large fixed fee.
Date Issued
2025-10-01
Date Acceptance
2025-03-28
Citation
Mathematical Finance, 2025, 35 (4), pp.779-795
ISSN
0960-1627
Publisher
Wiley
Start Page
779
End Page
795
Journal / Book Title
Mathematical Finance
Volume
35
Issue
4
Copyright Statement
© 2025 The Author(s). Mathematical Finance published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
License URL
Identifier
10.1111/mafi.12462
Subjects
delegated order execution | optimal contracts | price impact JEL Classification: C61
D47
G11
G12
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2025-04-23