Analysis of spreads in the dollar/euro and Deutsche Mark/dollar foreign exchange markets

This paper tries to provide a simple explanation for the empirical finding, documented here and also by Hau, Killeen and Moore (2002), that spreads in the spot USD/EUR market are substantially higher than those in the preceding DEM/USD foreign exchange market. The paper argues that it is primarily the re-factoring of the exchange rate, 1.75 DEM per USD compared to 1 USD per EUR together with the fact that dealers are faced with a minimum tick size, that has caused spreads to increase (as a percentage of mid-quote).