Changing Weak-Form Informational Efficiency: A Study on the World’s Stock Markets

Purpose: The aim of this study is to answer the question whether weak-form informational efficiency of the world’s stock markets tended to change over a long term. Methodology: A proxy of weak-form informational efficiency applied in the study is based on Bachelier’s random walk model. The research hypothesis states that over a long term weak-form informational efficiency of the world’s stock markets, proxied by a percentage of the null hypotheses which could not be rejected in the normality tests of the indexes returns, tended to improve. The research sample includes 77 all-share indexes from all over the world and the analysed time-series of their returns cover the period from 02/01/2013 to 28/02/2020. Findings: The conducted study allows for rejecting the stated research hypothesis as the changes of the efficiency turned out to be region-dependent. A long-term trend of the efficiency measure, calculated for all the indexes together, was flat, with a zero slope and the volatility of this measure was low. Hence, it suggests that when taking into account all the indexes examined, on a long-term basis, the world’s stock markets’ weak-form informational efficiency did not display neither any downward nor upward tendency. Research limitations: Future issue-related research can test weak-form informational efficiency under less strict conditions than these proposed by Bachelier. Value: As opposed to many other studies, which usually try to answer the question if the markets are efficient or not, this paper focuses its attention on the changes in efficiency over the years.