IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/5233.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Stock Market Efficiency and Economic Efficiency: Is There a Connection?

Author

Listed:
  • James Dow
  • Gary Gorton

Abstract

In a capitalist economy prices serve to equilibrate supply and demand for goods and services, continually changing to reallocate resources to their most efficient uses. However, secondary stock market prices, often viewed as the most 'informationally efficient' prices in the economy, have no direct role in the allocation of equity capital since managers have discretion in determining the level of investment. What is the link between stock price informational efficiency and economic efficiency? We present a model of the stock market in which: (i) managers have discretion in making investments and must be given the right incentives; and (ii) stock market traders may have important information that managers do not have about the value of prospective investment opportunities. In equilibrium, information in stock prices will guide investment decisions because managers will be compensated based on informative stock prices in the future. The stock market indirectly guides investment by transferring two kinds of information: information about investment opportunities and information about managers' past decisions. The fact that stock prices only have an indirect role suggests that the stock market may not be a necessary institution for the efficient allocation of equity. We emphasize this by providing an example of a banking system that performs as well.

Suggested Citation

  • James Dow & Gary Gorton, 1995. "Stock Market Efficiency and Economic Efficiency: Is There a Connection?," NBER Working Papers 5233, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:5233
    Note: CF
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w5233.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert A. Korajczyk & Deborah Lucas & Robert L. McDonald, 1990. "Understanding Stock Price Behavior around the Time of Equity Issues," NBER Chapters, in: Asymmetric Information, Corporate Finance, and Investment, pages 257-278, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Barry Bosworth, 1975. "The Stock Market and the Economy," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 6(2), pages 257-300.
    3. Kihlstrom, Richard E. & Matthews, Steven A., 1990. "Managerial incentives in an entrepreneurial stock market model," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 57-79, March.
    4. Fischer, Stanley & Merton, Robert C., 1984. "Macroeconomics and finance: The role of the stock market," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 57-108, January.
    5. Dow, James & Gorton, Gary, 1994. "Arbitrage Chains," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(3), pages 819-849, July.
    6. Glosten, Lawrence R. & Milgrom, Paul R., 1985. "Bid, ask and transaction prices in a specialist market with heterogeneously informed traders," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 71-100, March.
    7. Douglas W. Diamond, 1984. "Financial Intermediation and Delegated Monitoring," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 51(3), pages 393-414.
    8. Lucas, Deborah J & McDonald, Robert L, 1990. "Equity Issues and Stock Price Dynamics," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(4), pages 1019-1043, September.
    9. Dow, James & Gorton, Gary, 1997. "Noise Trading, Delegated Portfolio Management, and Economic Welfare," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(5), pages 1024-1050, October.
    10. Ivo Welch & David Wessels, 2000. "The Cross-Sectional Determinants Of Corporate Capital Expenditures: A Multinational Comparison," Schmalenbach Business Review (sbr), LMU Munich School of Management, vol. 52(2), pages 103-136, April.
    11. Kyle, Albert S, 1985. "Continuous Auctions and Insider Trading," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1315-1335, November.
    12. Diamond, Douglas W. & Verrecchia, Robert E., 1981. "Information aggregation in a noisy rational expectations economy," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 221-235, September.
    13. Timothy F. Bresnahan & Paul Milgrom & Jonathan Paul, 1992. "The Real Output of the Stock Exchange," NBER Chapters, in: Output Measurement in the Service Sectors, pages 195-216, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Zvi Griliches, 1992. "Output Measurement in the Service Sectors," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number gril92-1.
    15. Barro, Robert J, 1990. "The Stock Market and Investment," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 3(1), pages 115-131.
    16. Tobin, James, 1969. "A General Equilibrium Approach to Monetary Theory," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 1(1), pages 15-29, February.
    17. Boyd, John H. & Prescott, Edward C., 1986. "Financial intermediary-coalitions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 211-232, April.
    18. Hayashi, Fumio, 1982. "Tobin's Marginal q and Average q: A Neoclassical Interpretation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 213-224, January.
    19. F. A. Hayek, 2005. "The Use of Knowledge in Society," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Guang-Zhen Sun (ed.), Readings In The Economics Of The Division Of Labor The Classical Tradition, chapter 25, pages 270-284, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    20. Dow James & Gorton Gary, 1995. "Profitable Informed Trading in a Simple General Equilibrium Model of Asset Pricing," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 327-369, December.
    21. Biais, Bruno & Hillion, Pierre, 1994. "Insider and Liquidity Trading in Stock and Options Markets," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 7(4), pages 743-780.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Dow, James & Gorton, Gary, 1997. "Noise Trading, Delegated Portfolio Management, and Economic Welfare," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(5), pages 1024-1050, October.
    2. James Dow & Gary Gorton, 2006. "Noise Traders," NBER Working Papers 12256, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. McMillan, David G., 2004. "Nonlinear predictability of short-run deviations in UK stock market returns," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 149-154, August.
    4. Fernando Alexandre, 2002. "Monetary Policy, Investment and Non-Fundamental Shocks," NIPE Working Papers 6/2002, NIPE - Universidade do Minho.
    5. James Dow, 2003. "Informed Trading, Investment, and Welfare," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 76(3), pages 439-454, July.
    6. Malcolm Baker & Jeremy C. Stein & Jeffrey Wurgler, 2003. "When Does the Market Matter? Stock Prices and the Investment of Equity-Dependent Firms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 969-1005.
    7. Fernando Alexandre & Pedro Bação, 2005. "Monetary policy and asset prices: the investment channel," NIPE Working Papers 3/2005, NIPE - Universidade do Minho.
    8. McMillan, David G., 2005. "Non-linear dynamics in international stock market returns," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 81-91.
    9. David G. McMillan, 2003. "Non‐linear Predictability of UK Stock Market Returns," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 65(5), pages 557-573, December.
    10. Bai, Jennie & Philippon, Thomas & Savov, Alexi, 2016. "Have financial markets become more informative?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(3), pages 625-654.
    11. Branston, Christopher B. & Groenewold, Nicolaas, 2004. "Investment and share prices: fundamental versus speculative components," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 199-226, August.
    12. Gregory R. Duffee & Stephen D. Prowse, "undated". "What's Good for GM...? Using Auto Industry Stock Returns to Forecast Business Cycles and Test the Q-Theory of Investment," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1996-38, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), revised 04 Dec 2019.
    13. repec:zbw:bofrdp:1995_011 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Dimitri Vayanos & Jiang Wang, 2012. "Market Liquidity -- Theory and Empirical Evidence," NBER Working Papers 18251, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Vayanos, Dimitri & Wang, Jiang, 2013. "Market Liquidity—Theory and Empirical Evidence ," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1289-1361, Elsevier.
    16. Ndikumana, Leonce, 2005. "Financial development, financial structure, and domestic investment: International evidence," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 651-673, June.
    17. Andrei, Daniel & Mann, William & Moyen, Nathalie, 2019. "Why did the q theory of investment start working?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(2), pages 251-272.
    18. Bond, Philip & Eraslan, Hülya, 2010. "Information-based trade," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(5), pages 1675-1703, September.
    19. Palan, Stefan & Stöckl, Thomas, 2017. "When chasing the offender hurts the victim: The case of insider legislation," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 104-129.
    20. Tuomas A. Peltonen & Ricardo M. Sousa & Isabel S. Vansteenkiste, 2011. "Fundamentals, Financial Factors, and the Dynamics of Investment in Emerging Markets," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(0), pages 88-105, May.
    21. Mehar, Ayub, 2006. "Flow of portfolio investment among the Muslim countries: modelling and possibilities," MPRA Paper 18592, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 07 Jun 2007.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General

    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:nbr:nberwo:5233. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.