Trading Less Often but Trading Thicker: Scheduled Closures in a Hog Auction Market

Wholesale livestock markets close regularly, yet little is known about how scheduled closures reshape trading and market performance. This study examines how these closures affect trading in Taiwan’s largest hog auction market, which closes every Sunday and on special days added for festivals and supply adjustments. Using transaction data from 2020 to 2026, we compare the trading days around each closure with reference days in the same week; compare special closures with regular closures in an event difference-in-differences model; and estimate effects on the mean and volatility of daily sales value, head count, and average price. Around the regular Sunday closure, trading is lower before Sunday and higher on Monday, and volatility does not change. Relative to weeks with only the regular closure, festival closures lower quantities by about 12% before and after the closure, raise prices only before it, and raise volatility sharply on the last trading day before the closure. Supply-adjustment closures, imposed when hogs are in short supply, have little effect, and festival closures have much larger effects than supply-adjustment closures of equal length. These effects remain relative to festivals on which the market stays open; however, demand may differ between the two kinds of festivals. Fewer suppliers trade before special closures, and fewer buyers trade before and after them.