IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedpwp/87-20.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Rational bubbles in stock prices?

Author

Abstract

This paper reports empirical tests for the existence of rational bubbles in stock prices. The analysis focuses on a familiar model that defines market fundamentals to be the expected present value of dividends, discounted at a constantrate, and defines a rational bubble to be a self-confirming divergence of stock prices from market fundamentals in response to extraneous variables. The tests are based on the theoretical result that, if rational bubbles exist, time series obtained by differencing real stock prices do not have stationary means. Analysis of the data in both the time domain and the frequency domain suggests that the time series of aggregate real stock prices is nonstationary in levels but stationary in first differences. Applications of the time domain tests to simulated nonstationary time series that would be implied by rational bubbles indicates that the tests have power to detect relevant nonstationarity when it is present. Furthermore, application of the time-domain and frequency-domain tests to the time series of aggregate real dividends also indicates nonstationarity in levels but stationarity in first differences -- suggesting that market fundamentals can account for the stationarity properties of real stock prices. These findings imply that rational bubbles do not exist in stock prices. Accordingly,any evidence that stock price fluctuations do not accord with market fundamentals (asspecified above) is attributable to misspecification of market fundamentals.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Behzad T. Diba & Herschel I. Grossman, 1987. "Rational bubbles in stock prices?," Working Papers 87-20, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedpwp:87-20
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Flavin, Marjorie A, 1983. "Excess Volatility in the Financial Markets: A Reassessment of the Empirical Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(6), pages 929-956, December.
    2. Campbell, John Y., 1987. "Stock returns and the term structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 373-399, June.
    3. Obstfeld, Maurice & Rogoff, Kenneth, 1983. "Speculative Hyperinflations in Maximizing Models: Can We Rule Them Out?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(4), pages 675-687, August.
    4. 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.
    5. Tirole, Jean, 1982. "On the Possibility of Speculation under Rational Expectations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(5), pages 1163-1181, September.
    6. Marsh, Terry A & Merton, Robert C, 1986. "Dividend Variability and Variance Bounds Tests for the Rationality ofStock Market Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(3), pages 483-498, June.
    7. Philippe Weil, 1987. "Confidence and the Real Value of Money in an Overlapping Generations Economy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(1), pages 1-22.
    8. Kenneth D. West, 1987. "A Specification Test for Speculative Bubbles," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(3), pages 553-580.
    9. Hamilton, James D. & Whiteman, Charles H., 1985. "The observable implications of self-fulfilling expectations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 353-373, November.
    10. Nelson, Charles R. & Plosser, Charles I., 1982. "Trends and random walks in macroeconmic time series : Some evidence and implications," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 139-162.
    11. LeRoy, Stephen F & Porter, Richard D, 1981. "The Present-Value Relation: Tests Based on Implied Variance Bounds," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(3), pages 555-574, May.
    12. Grossman, Sanford J & Shiller, Robert J, 1981. "The Determinants of the Variability of Stock Market Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(2), pages 222-227, May.
    13. Behzad T. Diba & Herschel I. Grossman, 1985. "The Impossibility of Rational Bubbles," NBER Working Papers 1615, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Fama, Eugene F. & Schwert, G. William, 1977. "Asset returns and inflation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 115-146, November.
    15. Burmeister, Edwin & Wall, Kent D., 1982. "Kalman filtering estimation of unobserved rational expectations with an application to the German hyperinflation," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 255-284, November.
    16. Tirole, Jean, 1985. "Asset Bubbles and Overlapping Generations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1499-1528, November.
    17. Flood, Robert P & Garber, Peter M, 1980. "Market Fundamentals versus Price-Level Bubbles: The First Tests," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 88(4), pages 745-770, August.
    18. Robert P. Flood & Peter M. Garber & Louis O. Scott, 1982. "Two Notes on Indeterminacy Problems," NBER Working Papers 0841, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Su, Chi-Wei & Wang, Kai-Hua & Chang, Hsu-Ling & Dumitrescu–Peculea, Adelina, 2017. "Do iron ore price bubbles occur?," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 340-346.
    2. Xin Li & Chi-Wei Su & Meng Qin & Fahai Zhao, 2020. "Testing for Bubbles in the Chinese Art Market," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(1), pages 21582440199, January.
    3. Peter C. B. Phillips & Jun Yu, 2011. "Dating the timeline of financial bubbles during the subprime crisis," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 2(3), pages 455-491, November.
    4. Catherine Araujo Bonjean & Catherine Simonet, 2016. "Are grain markets in Niger driven by speculation?," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 68(3), pages 714-735.
    5. Ozan Hatipoglu & Onur Uyar, 2012. "Do Bubbles Spill Over? Estimating Financial Bubbles in Emerging Markets," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(S5), pages 64-75, November.
    6. Esteban Gómez & Sandra Rozo, 2008. "Beyond Bubbles: The Role of Asset Prices in Early-Warning Indicators," Revista ESPE - Ensayos Sobre Política Económica, Banco de la República, vol. 26(56), pages 114-148, June.
    7. Esteban Gómez & Sandra Rozo, 2008. "Beyond Bubbles: The Role of Asset Prices in Early-Warning Indicators," Revista ESPE - Ensayos Sobre Política Económica, Banco de la República, vol. 26(56), pages 114-148, June.
    8. Cerruti, Gianluca & Lombardini, Simone, 2022. "Financial bubbles as a recursive process lead by short-term strategies," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 555-568.
    9. Zeren Feyyaz & Yilanci Veli, 2019. "Are there Multiple Bubbles in the Stock Markets? Further Evidence from Selected Countries," Ekonomika (Economics), Sciendo, vol. 98(1), pages 81-95, June.

    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. Robert P. Flood & Robert J. Hodrick, 1989. "Testable Implications of Indeterminacies in Models with Rational Expectations," NBER Working Papers 2903, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Robert P. Flood & Robert J. Hodrick & Paul Kaplan, 1986. "An Evaluation of Recent Evidence on Stock Market Bubbles," NBER Working Papers 1971, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Refet S. Gürkaynak, 2008. "Econometric Tests Of Asset Price Bubbles: Taking Stock," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(1), pages 166-186, February.
    4. Franklin Allen & Gary B. Gorton, "undated". "Rational Finite Bubbles," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 41-88, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.
    5. West, Kenneth D, 1988. "Dividend Innovations and Stock Price Volatility," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(1), pages 37-61, January.
    6. Flood, Robert P & Hodrick, Robert J, 1986. "Asset Price Volatility, Bubbles, and Process Switching," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 41(4), pages 831-842, September.
    7. Uribe Gil, Jorge Mario, 2013. "Testing for multiple bubbles with daily data," Documentos de Trabajo 11028, Universidad del Valle, CIDSE.
    8. Alberto Madrid & Luis A. Hierro, 2015. "Burbujas especulativas: el estado de una cuestión poco estudiada," Cuadernos de Economía - Spanish Journal of Economics and Finance, Asociación Cuadernos de Economía, vol. 38(108), pages 123-138, Septiembr.
    9. Drobyshevsky Sergey & Narkevich Sergey & E. Pikulina & D. Polevoy, 2009. "Analysis Of a Possible Bubble On the Russian Real Estate Market," Research Paper Series, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, issue 128.
    10. Taipalus, Katja, 2006. "Bubbles in the Finnish and US equities markets," Scientific Monographs, Bank of Finland, number 35/2006.
    11. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2013. "Understanding Asset Prices," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2013-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    12. Akdeniz, Levent & Salih, Aslıhan Altay & Ok, Süleyman Tuluğ, 2007. "Are stock prices too volatile to be justified by the dividend discount model?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 376(C), pages 433-444.
    13. Enrique Sentana, 1993. "The econometrics of the stock market I: rationality tests," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 17(3), pages 401-420, September.
    14. repec:zbw:bofism:2012_047 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Ithurbide, Philippe, 1987. "Le marché de l’or et les bulles rationnelles," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 63(4), pages 331-356, décembre.
    16. repec:zbw:bofism:2006_035 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Taipalus, Katja, 2012. "Detecting asset price bubbles with time-series methods," Scientific Monographs, Bank of Finland, number 2012_047.
    18. Taipalus, Katja, 2012. "Detecting asset price bubbles with time-series methods," Bank of Finland Scientific Monographs, Bank of Finland, volume 0, number sm2012_047, July.
    19. Tolhurst, Tor N., 2018. "A Model-Free Bubble Detection Method: Application to the World Market for Superstar Wines," 2018 Annual Meeting, August 5-7, Washington, D.C. 274387, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    20. Wihlborg, Clas, 1987. "Speculation, Bubbles, and Sunspots under Structural Uncertainty," Working Paper Series 180, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    21. Chung, Heetaik & Lee, Bong-Soo, 1998. "Fundamental and nonfundamental components in stock prices of Pacific-Rim countries," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 6(3-4), pages 321-346, August.
    22. Froot, Kenneth A & Obstfeld, Maurice, 1991. "Intrinsic Bubbles: The Case of Stock Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1189-1214, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Stock - Prices;

    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:fip:fedpwp:87-20. 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: Beth Paul (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbphus.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.