This article analyzes the effect of speculation on the economic welfare from various criteria, using a simple Edgeworth box within a three-period Walrasian competition framework. Here “speculation” is defined as a series of transition processes of each agent’s spontaneous production of private information, the exchange of commodities based on it under the externality environment, and finally its spillover into public. The methodology and implications are closely related with the concepts of herd behavior by Banerjee (1992), informational externality by Stein (1987), information sharing by Shapiro (1985), and economic value of speculation by Hirshleifer (1971, 1975, 1977). It is explicitly shown that the complete sharing of produced information under externality environment, if not accompanied by almost sure productivity effect, does not necessarily attain the non-negative economic value especially in terms of ex-ante expected utility. The implication is consistent with Aoki (2005). Lastly some criticisms about why this could happen are discussed.
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Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number
12425.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D50 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - General A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - General D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General
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