IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jjrfmx/v14y2021i6p263-d572629.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A New Measure of Market Inefficiency

Author

Listed:
  • Christopher R. Stephens

    (C3-Centro de Ciencias de la Complejidad, Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad de México 04510, Mexico
    Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad de México 04510, Mexico)

  • Harald A. Benink

    (School of Economics and Management, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands
    Financial Markets Group, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK)

  • José Luís Gordillo

    (C3-Centro de Ciencias de la Complejidad, Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad de México 04510, Mexico)

  • Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra

    (Department of Sociology, University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Dr, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA)

Abstract

Financial crises, such as the Great Financial Crisis of 2007–2009 and the COVID-19 Crisis of 2020–2021, lead to high volatility in financial markets and highlight the importance of the debate on the Efficient Markets Hypothesis, a corollary of which is that in an efficient market it should not be possible to systematically make excess returns. In this paper, we discuss a new empirical measure—Excess Trading Returns—that distinguishes between market and trading returns and that can be used to measure inefficiency. We define an Inefficiency Matrix that can provide a complete, empirical characterization of the inefficiencies inherent in a market. We illustrate its use in the context of empirical data from a pair of model markets, where information asymmetries can be clearly understood, and discuss the challenges of applying it to market data from commercial exchanges.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher R. Stephens & Harald A. Benink & José Luís Gordillo & Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, 2021. "A New Measure of Market Inefficiency," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-22, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jjrfmx:v:14:y:2021:i:6:p:263-:d:572629
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/14/6/263/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/14/6/263/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Harald Benink & Peter Bossaerts, 2001. "An Exploration of Neo‐Austrian Theory Applied to Financial Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(3), pages 1011-1027, June.
    2. Lubos Pastor & Pietro Veronesi, 2009. "Learning in Financial Markets," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 361-381, November.
    3. Schwert, G. William, 2003. "Anomalies and market efficiency," 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 15, pages 939-974, Elsevier.
    4. De Long, J Bradford & Andrei Shleifer & Lawrence H. Summers & Robert J. Waldmann, 1990. "Noise Trader Risk in Financial Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(4), pages 703-738, August.
    5. Marcin Kacperczyk & Clemens Sialm & Lu Zheng, 2008. "Unobserved Actions of Mutual Funds," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(6), pages 2379-2416, November.
    6. Shleifer, Andrei, 2000. "Inefficient Markets: An Introduction to Behavioral Finance," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198292272.
    7. Burton G. Malkiel, 2003. "The Efficient Market Hypothesis and Its Critics," Working Papers 111, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    8. Fama, Eugene F, 1991. "Efficient Capital Markets: II," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(5), pages 1575-1617, December.
    9. Burton G. Malkiel, 2003. "The Efficient Market Hypothesis and Its Critics," Working Papers 111, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    10. Gode, Dhananjay K & Sunder, Shyam, 1993. "Allocative Efficiency of Markets with Zero-Intelligence Traders: Market as a Partial Substitute for Individual Rationality," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(1), pages 119-137, February.
    11. repec:pri:cepsud:91malkiel is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Fama, Eugene F, 1970. "Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 25(2), pages 383-417, May.
    13. Fama, Eugene F & French, Kenneth R, 1996. "Multifactor Explanations of Asset Pricing Anomalies," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(1), pages 55-84, March.
    14. Mehra, Rajnish & Prescott, Edward C., 1985. "The equity premium: A puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 145-161, March.
    15. Robert J. Shiller, 2003. "From Efficient Markets Theory to Behavioral Finance," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(1), pages 83-104, Winter.
    16. Fama, Eugene F., 1998. "Market efficiency, long-term returns, and behavioral finance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 283-306, September.
    17. LeBaron, Blake, 2000. "Agent-based computational finance: Suggested readings and early research," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 24(5-7), pages 679-702, June.
    18. Kai-Yin Woo & Chulin Mai & Michael McAleer & Wing-Keung Wong, 2020. "Review on Efficiency and Anomalies in Stock Markets," Economies, MDPI, vol. 8(1), pages 1-51, March.
    19. Jacobs, Heiko & Müller, Sebastian, 2020. "Anomalies across the globe: Once public, no longer existent?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(1), pages 213-230.
    20. Burton G. Malkiel, 2003. "The Efficient Market Hypothesis and Its Critics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(1), pages 59-82, Winter.
    21. Benink, Harald A. & Gordillo, José Luis & Pardo, Juan Pablo & Stephens, Christopher R., 2010. "Market efficiency and learning in an artificial stock market: A perspective from Neo-Austrian economics," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 668-688, September.
    22. Jeremy C. Stein, 2009. "Presidential Address: Sophisticated Investors and Market Efficiency," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(4), pages 1517-1548, August.
    23. Forsythe, Robert & Forrest Nelson & George R. Neumann & Jack Wright, 1992. "Anatomy of an Experimental Political Stock Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(5), pages 1142-1161, December.
    24. Pesaran, M Hashem & Timmermann, Allan, 1995. "Predictability of Stock Returns: Robustness and Economic Significance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(4), pages 1201-1228, September.
    25. William F. Sharpe, 1964. "Capital Asset Prices: A Theory Of Market Equilibrium Under Conditions Of Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 19(3), pages 425-442, September.
    26. Balvers, Ronald J & Cosimano, Thomas F & McDonald, Bill, 1990. "Predicting Stock Returns in an Efficient Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(4), pages 1109-1128, September.
    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. Cristi Spulbar & Elena Loredana Minea, 2022. "Inefficient Stock Markets And Their Implications In The Context Of Extreme Financial Events: A Theoretical Framework," Annals - Economy Series, Constantin Brancusi University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 1, pages 38-41, February.

    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. Qianwei Ying & Tahir Yousaf & Qurat ul Ain & Yasmeen Akhtar & Muhammad Shahid Rasheed, 2019. "Stock Investment and Excess Returns: A Critical Review in the Light of the Efficient Market Hypothesis," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-22, June.
    2. Ashok Chanabasangouda Patil & Shailesh Rastogi, 2019. "Time-Varying Price–Volume Relationship and Adaptive Market Efficiency: A Survey of the Empirical Literature," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-18, June.
    3. Thomas Holtfort, 2019. "From standard to evolutionary finance: a literature survey," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 69(2), pages 207-232, June.
    4. Adam Zaremba & Jacob Koby Shemer, 2018. "Price-Based Investment Strategies," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-319-91530-2, December.
    5. Stéphane Goutte & David Guerreiro & Bilel Sanhaji & Sophie Saglio & Julien Chevallier, 2019. "International Financial Markets," Post-Print halshs-02183053, HAL.
    6. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2013. "Understanding Asset Prices," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2013-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    7. Majumder, Debasish, 2013. "Towards an efficient stock market: Empirical evidence from the Indian market," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 572-587.
    8. Taufiq Choudhry & Ranadeva Jayasekera, 2015. "Level of efficiency in the UK equity market: empirical study of the effects of the global financial crisis," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 213-242, February.
    9. Ryan Bartens & Shakill Hassan, 2010. "Value, size and momentum portfolios in real time: the cross section of South African stocks," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 35(2), pages 181-202, August.
    10. Concetta Sorropago, 2014. "Behavioral Finance and Agent Based Model: the new evolving discipline of quantitative behavioral finance ?," DIAG Technical Reports 2014-13, Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering, Universita' degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza".
    11. David Hirshleifer, 2001. "Investor Psychology and Asset Pricing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(4), pages 1533-1597, August.
    12. Jürgen Huber & Michael Kirchler, 2013. "Corporate campaign contributions and abnormal stock returns after presidential elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 156(1), pages 285-307, July.
    13. Chan, Wesley S. & Frankel, Richard & Kothari, S.P., 2004. "Testing behavioral finance theories using trends and consistency in financial performance," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 3-50, December.
    14. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95.
    15. Daniel Martin Katz & Michael J Bommarito II & Tyler Soellinger & James Ming Chen, 2015. "Law on the Market? Abnormal Stock Returns and Supreme Court Decision-Making," Papers 1508.05751, arXiv.org, revised May 2017.
    16. Narayan, Seema & Smyth, Russell, 2015. "The financial econometrics of price discovery and predictability," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 380-393.
    17. Martin Gold, 2010. "Fiduciary Finance," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13813.
    18. Alagidede, Paul, 2011. "Return behaviour in Africa's emerging equity markets," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 133-140, May.
    19. Dionysia Dionysiou, 2015. "Choosing Among Alternative Long-Run Event-Study Techniques," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1), pages 158-198, February.
    20. 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.

    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:gam:jjrfmx:v:14:y:2021:i:6:p:263-:d:572629. 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: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    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.