How spread changes affect the order book: Comparing the price responses of order deletions and placements to trades

We observe the effects of the three different events that cause spread changes in the order book, namely trades, deletions and placement of limit orders. By looking at the frequencies of the relative amounts of price changing events, we discover that deletions of orders open the bid-ask spread of a stock more often than trades do. We see that once the amount of spread changes due to deletions exceeds the amount of the ones due to trades, other observables in the order book change as well. We the...