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This paper aims to empirically indicate the factors influencing stock liquidity premium (i.e. the relationship between liquidity and stock returns) in one of the leading European emerging markets, namely, the Polish one.

Various firms’ characteristics and market states are analysed as potentially affecting liquidity premiums in the Polish stock market. Stock returns are regressed on liquidity measures and panel models are used. Liquidity premium has been estimated in various subsamples.

The findings vividly contradict the common sense that liquidity premium raises during the periods of stress. Liquidity premium does not increase during bear markets, as investors lengthen the investment horizon when market liquidity decreases. Liquidity premium varies with the firm’s size, book-to-market value and stock risk, but these patterns seem to vanish during a bear market.

This is one of the first empirical papers considering conditional stock liquidity premium in an emerging market. Using a unique methodological design it is presented that liquidity premium in emerging markets behaves differently than in developed markets.

The positive illiquidity–return relationship (so-called liquidity premium) is a well-established pattern in international developed stock markets. The magnitude of liquidity premium should increase with market illiquidity. Existing studies, however, do not confirm this conjecture with regard to frontier markets. This may result from applying different approaches to the investors' holding period. The paper aims to identify the role of the holding period in shaping the illiquidity–return relationship in emerging and frontier stock markets, which are arguably considered illiquid.

The authors utilise the data on stocks listed on fourteen exchanges in Central and Eastern Europe. The authors regress stock returns on liquidity measures variously transformed to reflect the clientele effect in a liquidity–return relationship.

The authors show that the investors' holding period moderates the illiquidity–return relationship in CEE markets and also show that the liquidity premium in these markets is statistically and economically relevant.

The findings may be of great interest to investors, companies and regulators. Investors and companies should take liquidity into account when making decisions; regulators should employ liquidity-enhancing actions to decrease companies' cost of capital and expand firms' investment opportunities, which will improve growth perspectives for the entire economy.

These findings enrich the understanding of the role that the investors' holding period plays in the illiquidity–return relationship in CEE markets. To the best knowledge, this is the first study which investigates the effect of holding period on liquidity premium in emerging and frontier markets.