IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/aim/wpaimx/1311.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Inefficient Markets Hypothesis: Why Financial Markets Do Not Work Well in the Real World

Author

Abstract

Existing literature continues to be unable to offer a convincing explanation for the volatility of the stochastic discount factor in real world data. Our work provides such an explanation. We do not rely on frictions, market incompleteness or transactions costs of any kind. Instead, we modify a simple stochastic representative agent model by allowing for birth and death and by allowing for heterogeneity in agents’ discount factors. We show that these two minor and realistic changes to the timeless Arrow-Debreu paradigm are sufficient to invalidate the implication that competitive financial markets efficiently allocate risk. Our work demonstrates that financial markets, by their very nature, cannot be Pareto efficient, except by chance. Although individuals in our model are rational; markets are not.

Suggested Citation

  • Roger E.A. Farmer & Carine Nourry & Alain Venditti, 2013. "The Inefficient Markets Hypothesis: Why Financial Markets Do Not Work Well in the Real World," AMSE Working Papers 1311, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France, revised 26 Feb 2013.
    • Handle: RePEc:aim:wpaimx:1311
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.amse-aixmarseille.fr/sites/default/files/_dt/2012/wp_2013_-_nr_11.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Farmer, Roger E.A. & Nourry, Carine & Venditti, Alain, 2011. "Debt, deficits and finite horizons: The stochastic case," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 111(1), pages 47-49, April.
    2. Farmer, Roger E. A. & Plotnikov, Dmitry, 2012. "Does Fiscal Policy Matter? Blinder And Solow Revisited," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(S1), pages 149-166, April.
    3. K. J. Arrow, 1964. "The Role of Securities in the Optimal Allocation of Risk-bearing," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 31(2), pages 91-96.
    4. Christopher J. Malloy & Tobias J. Moskowitz & Annette Vissing‐Jørgensen, 2009. "Long‐Run Stockholder Consumption Risk and Asset Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(6), pages 2427-2479, December.
    5. Gauti B. Eggertsson, 2011. "What Fiscal Policy Is Effective at Zero Interest Rates?," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2010, volume 25, pages 59-112, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Carlstrom, Charles T & Fuerst, Timothy S, 1997. "Agency Costs, Net Worth, and Business Fluctuations: A Computable General Equilibrium Analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(5), pages 893-910, December.
    7. Benhabib Jess & Farmer Roger E. A., 1994. "Indeterminacy and Increasing Returns," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 19-41, June.
    8. Mehra, Rajnish & Prescott, Edward C., 1985. "The equity premium: A puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 145-161, March.
    9. Alberto Martin & Jaume Ventura, 2011. "Theoretical Notes on Bubbles and the Current Crisis," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 59(1), pages 6-40, April.
    10. KevinJ. Lansing, 2010. "Rational and Near-Rational Bubbles Without Drift," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(549), pages 1149-1174, December.
    11. Emmanuel Farhi & Jean Tirole, 2012. "Bubbly Liquidity," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(2), pages 678-706.
    12. Chao Gu & Fabrizio Mattesini & Cyril Monnet & Randall Wright, 2013. "Endogenous Credit Cycles," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 121(5), pages 940-965.
    13. Jess Benhabib & Pengfei Wang & Yi Wen, 2015. "Sentiments and Aggregate Demand Fluctuations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 83, pages 549-585, March.
    14. David Cass, 1965. "Optimum Growth in an Aggregative Model of Capital Accumulation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 32(3), pages 233-240.
    15. Caballero, Ricardo J. & Krishnamurthy, Arvind, 2006. "Bubbles and capital flow volatility: Causes and risk management," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 35-53, January.
    16. Farmer, Roger E.A. & Woodford, Michael, 1997. "Self-Fulfilling Prophecies And The Business Cycle," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(4), pages 740-769, December.
    17. Kiyotaki, Nobuhiro & Moore, John, 1997. "Credit Cycles," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(2), pages 211-248, April.
    18. Barberis, Nicholas & Thaler, Richard, 2003. "A survey of behavioral finance," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 18, pages 1053-1128, Elsevier.
    19. Bullard, James & Evans, George W. & Honkapohja, Seppo, 2010. "A Model Of Near-Rational Exuberance," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(2), pages 166-188, April.
    20. Bernanke, Ben & Gertler, Mark & Gilchrist, Simon, 1996. "The Financial Accelerator and the Flight to Quality," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 78(1), pages 1-15, February.
    21. Robert B. Barsky & J. Bradford De Long, 1993. "Why Does the Stock Market Fluctuate?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(2), pages 291-311.
    22. Shiller, Robert J, 1981. "Do Stock Prices Move Too Much to be Justified by Subsequent Changes in Dividends?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 421-436, June.
    23. Larry G. Epstein & Stanley E. Zin, 2013. "Substitution, risk aversion and the temporal behavior of consumption and asset returns: A theoretical framework," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 12, pages 207-239, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    24. Shell, Karl, 1971. "Notes on the Economics of Infinity," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 79(5), pages 1002-1011, Sept.-Oct.
    25. John Geanakoplos, 2009. "The Leverage Cycle," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1715, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    26. Eugene F. Fama, 1963. "Mandelbrot and the Stable Paretian Hypothesis," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 36, pages 420-420.
    27. Malinvaud, Edmond, 1987. "The Overlapping Generations Model in 1947," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 25(1), pages 103-105, March.
    28. John Y. Campbell & John Cochrane, 1999. "Force of Habit: A Consumption-Based Explanation of Aggregate Stock Market Behavior," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(2), pages 205-251, April.
    29. Roger E.A. Farmer, 2012. "Qualitative Easing: How it Works and Why it Matters," NBER Working Papers 18421, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    30. Bernanke, Ben & Gertler, Mark, 1989. "Agency Costs, Net Worth, and Business Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(1), pages 14-31, March.
    31. Blanchard, Olivier J, 1985. "Debt, Deficits, and Finite Horizons," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(2), pages 223-247, April.
    32. John Geanakoplos, 2009. "The Leverage Cycle," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1715R, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised Jan 2010.
    33. Farmer Roger E. A. & Guo Jang-Ting, 1994. "Real Business Cycles and the Animal Spirits Hypothesis," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 42-72, June.
    34. Cass, David & Shell, Karl, 1983. "Do Sunspots Matter?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(2), pages 193-227, April.
    35. Jianjun Miao & Pengfei Wang, 2012. "Bubbles and Total Factor Productivity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 82-87, May.
    36. John H. Cochrane, 2011. "Presidential Address: Discount Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(4), pages 1047-1108, August.
    37. Azariadis, Costas, 1981. "Self-fulfilling prophecies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 380-396, December.
    38. Rocheteau, Guillaume & Wright, Randall, 2013. "Liquidity and asset-market dynamics," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 275-294.
    39. John Geanakoplos & Ana Fostel, 2008. "Leverage Cycles and the Anxious Economy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1211-1244, September.
    40. Futia, Carl A, 1982. "Invariant Distributions and the Limiting Behavior of Markovian Economic Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(2), pages 377-408, March.
    41. John Geanakoplos, 2010. "The Leverage Cycle," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2009, Volume 24, pages 1-65, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    42. Wen, Yi, 1998. "Capacity Utilization under Increasing Returns to Scale," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 7-36, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. The Inefficient Markets Hypothesis: Why Financial Markets Do Not Work Well in the Real World
      by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog on 2013-03-16 00:50:06

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Roger Farmer, 2014. "Asset Prices in a Lifecycle Economy," NBER Working Papers 19958, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Campos Dias de Sousa, Ricardo Emanuel & Howden, David, 2015. "The Efficient Market Conjecture," MPRA Paper 79792, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Farmer, Roger & Zabczyk, Pawel, 2016. "The Theory of Unconventional Monetary Policy," CEPR Discussion Papers 11196, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Roger E. A. Farmer, 2018. "Pricing Assets in a Perpetual Youth Model," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 30, pages 106-124, October.
    5. Thomas Hintermaier & Winfried Koeniger, 2018. "Household debt and crises of confidence," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 9(3), pages 1489-1542, November.
    6. Farmer, Roger, 2013. "The Natural Rate Hypothesis: an idea past its sell-by date," Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin, Bank of England, vol. 53(3), pages 244-256.
    7. Roger E.A. Farmer, 2016. "Pricing Assets in an Economy with Two Types of People," NBER Working Papers 22228, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Stefanescu, Razvan & Dumitriu, Ramona, 2016. "Particularitǎţi ale evoluţiei variabilelor financiare [Some particularities of the financial variables evolution]," MPRA Paper 73481, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 02 Sep 2016.
    9. Beniamino Moro, 2013. "The Run On Repo and the Liquidity Shortage Problems of the Current Global Financial Crisis: Europe vs. The US," Ekonomi-tek - International Economics Journal, Turkish Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 41-77, January.
    10. Roger E. A. Farmer, 2014. "Financial Stability and the Role of the Financial Policy Committee," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 82(S1), pages 35-43, September.
    11. Benjamin Keefer, 2016. "Sensitization and Extraordinary Persistence," Working Papers 2016-01, Carleton College, Department of Economics.
    12. Dmitry Plotnikov, 2014. "Hysteresis in Unemployment and Jobless Recoveries," IMF Working Papers 2014/077, International Monetary Fund.
    13. de la Torre, Augusto & Ize, Alain, 2013. "The foundations of macroprudential regulation : a conceptual roadmap," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6575, The World Bank.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95.
    2. Farmer, Roger, 2019. "The Indeterminacy School in Macroeconomics," CEPR Discussion Papers 13745, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Roger E A Farmer, 2019. "The Indeterminacy Agenda in Macroeconomics," National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) Discussion Papers 507, National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
    4. Roger E. A. Farmer, 2018. "Pricing Assets in a Perpetual Youth Model," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 30, pages 106-124, October.
    5. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2013. "Understanding Asset Prices," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2013-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    6. Stijn Claessens & M. Ayhan Kose, 2017. "Asset prices and macroeconomic outcomes: A survey," CAMA Working Papers 2017-76, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    7. Farmer, Roger E.A., 2016. "The Evolution Of Endogenous Business Cycles," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(2), pages 544-557, March.
    8. Mesly, Olivier & Chkir, Imed & Racicot, François-Éric, 2019. "Predatory cells and puzzling financial crises: Are toxic products good for the financial markets?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 11-31.
    9. Farmer, Roger, 2016. "Pricing Assets in an Economy with Two Types of People," CEPR Discussion Papers 11253, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Angeletos, G.-M. & Lian, C., 2016. "Incomplete Information in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1065-1240, Elsevier.
    11. Kazuo Mino, 2017. "Sunspot-Driven Business Cycles: An Overview," KIER Working Papers 973, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
    12. Etro, Federico, 2017. "Research in economics and macroeconomics," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 373-383.
    13. de la Torre, Augusto & Ize, Alain, 2013. "The foundations of macroprudential regulation : a conceptual roadmap," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6575, The World Bank.
    14. Roger Farmer, 2014. "Asset Prices in a Lifecycle Economy," NBER Working Papers 19958, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Leland Farmer & Roger Farmer, 2022. "Zoomers and Boomers: Asset Prices and Intergenerational Inequality," NBER Working Papers 30419, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Chao He & Randall Wright & Yu Zhu, 2015. "Housing and Liquidity," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 18(3), pages 435-455, July.
    17. Calvet, Laurent-Emmanuel & Grandmont, Jean-Michel & Lemaire, Isabelle, 2018. "Aggregation of heterogenous beliefs, asset pricing, and risk sharing in complete financial markets," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 117-146.
    18. Tyler Muir, 2017. "Financial Crises and Risk Premia," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(2), pages 765-809.
    19. George-Marios Angeletos & Chen Lian, 2016. "Incomplete Information in Macroeconomics: Accommodating Frictions in Coordination," NBER Working Papers 22297, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Wei Xiong, 2013. "Bubbles, Crises, and Heterogeneous Beliefs," NBER Working Papers 18905, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inefficient markets; heterogeneous agents; overlapping generations; sunspots; extrinsic uncertainty; excess volatility.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aim:wpaimx:1311. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Gregory Cornu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/amseafr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.