IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/3209.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Simple Proof That Futures Markets are Almost Always Informationally Inefficient

Author

Listed:
  • Ian Gale
  • Joseph Stiglitz

Abstract

Previous work which showed that prices could aggregate perfectly the diverse information of traders depended critically on the assumption that all agents had constant absolute risk utility. We show that either all agents must have constant absolute risk aversion utility, or all must have constant relative aversion in order for the strong form of the efficient market hypothesis to hold generically.

Suggested Citation

  • Ian Gale & Joseph Stiglitz, 1989. "A Simple Proof That Futures Markets are Almost Always Informationally Inefficient," NBER Working Papers 3209, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3209
    Note: ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w3209.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Grossman, Sanford J & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1980. "On the Impossibility of Informationally Efficient Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(3), pages 393-408, June.
    2. Radner, Roy, 1979. "Rational Expectations Equilibrium: Generic Existence and the Information Revealed by Prices," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(3), pages 655-678, May.
    3. Tirole, Jean, 1982. "On the Possibility of Speculation under Rational Expectations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(5), pages 1163-1181, September.
    4. Jordan, J S, 1983. "On the Efficient Markets Hypothesis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(5), pages 1325-1343, September.
    5. Jerry Green, 1977. "The Non-existence of Informational Equilibria," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 44(3), pages 451-463.
    6. Albert S. Kyle, 1989. "Informed Speculation with Imperfect Competition," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 56(3), pages 317-355.
    7. Bray, Margaret M, 1981. "Futures Trading, Rational Expectations, and the Efficient Markets Hypothesis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(3), pages 575-596, May.
    8. Grossman, Sanford J & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1976. "Information and Competitive Price Systems," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 66(2), pages 246-253, May.
    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. Coffinet, J., 2008. "La prévision des taux d’intérêt à partir de contrats futures : l’apport de variables économiques et financières," Working papers 193, Banque de France.
    2. Bruce C. Greenwald & Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1991. "Information, Finance, and Markets: The Architecture of Allocative Mechanisms," NBER Working Papers 3652, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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. Beth Allen & James S. Jordan, 1998. "The existence of rational expectations equilibrium: a retrospective," Staff Report 252, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    2. CALCAGNO, Riccardo & LOVO, Stefano M., 1998. "Bid-ask price competition with asymmetric information between market makers," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 1998016, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    3. James Peck & Matthew O. Jackson, 1999. "Asymmetric information in a competitive market game: Reexamining the implications of rational expectations," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 13(3), pages 603-628.
    4. Muendler, Marc-Andreas, 2007. "The possibility of informationally efficient markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 133(1), pages 467-483, March.
    5. Garcia, René, 1986. "La théorie économique de l’information : exposé synthétique de la littérature," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 62(1), pages 88-109, mars.
    6. James Dow & Gary Gorton, 2006. "Noise Traders," NBER Working Papers 12256, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Jason Shachat & Anand Srinivasan, 2022. "Informational Price Cascades and Non-Aggregation of Asymmetric Information in Experimental Asset Markets," Journal of Behavioral Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(4), pages 388-407, November.
    8. Berliant, Marcus & Yu, Chia-Ming, 2013. "Rational expectations in urban economics," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 197-208.
    9. Anagnostidis, Panagiotis & Fontaine, Patrice & Varsakelis, Christos, 2020. "Are high–frequency traders informed?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 365-383.
    10. Mäkinen, Taneli & Ohl, Björn, 2015. "Information acquisition and learning from prices over the business cycle," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 158(PB), pages 585-633.
    11. Estelle Cantillon & Aurélie Slechten, 2018. "Information Aggregation in Emissions Markets with Abatement," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 132, pages 53-79.
    12. Ming†Chang Wang & Lon†Ping Zu, 2013. "Trade Timing, Price Volatility and Serial Correlation," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 19(5), pages 911-934, November.
    13. Daniel Friedman & Glen W. Harrison & Jon W. Salmon, 1982. "The Informational Role of Futures Markets and Learning Behavious: Some Experimental Evidence," UCLA Economics Working Papers 248, UCLA Department of Economics.
    14. Bernardo, Antonio E. & Judd, Kenneth L., 2000. "Asset market equilibrium with general tastes, returns, and informational asymmetries," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 17-43, February.
    15. Alexander Zimper, 2017. "Rationalizable Information Equilibria," Working Papers 201745, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    16. 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.
    17. Panagiotis Anagnostidis & Patrice Fontaine & Christos Varsakelis, 2020. "Are high–frequency traders informed?," Post-Print hal-03062831, HAL.
    18. Tunca, Tunay I., 2008. "Information precision and asymptotic efficiency of industrial markets," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(9-10), pages 964-996, September.
    19. Thomas Delcey & Francesco Sergi, 2019. "The Efficient Market Hypothesis and Rational Expectations. How Did They Meet and Live (Happily?) Ever After," Working Papers hal-02187362, HAL.
    20. Felipe Zurita, 2001. "Speculation in Financial Markets: A Survey," Documentos de Trabajo 197, Instituto de Economia. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile..

    More about this item

    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:3209. 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.