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Asset Prices When Agents are Marked-to-Market

Author

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  • Gary Gorton
  • Ping He
  • Lixin Huang

Abstract

"Risk management" in securities markets refers to the oversight of portfolio managers and professional traders when they trade on behalf of investors in security markets. Monitoring of their trading performance, profit and loss, and risk-taking behavior, is measured by principals using security market prices. We study the optimality of the practice of marking-to-market and provide conditions under which investing principals should optimally monitor their agent traders using market prices to measure traders' performance. Asset prices, however, can be affected by mark-to-market contracts. We show that such contracts introduce an externality when there are many traders. Traders may rationally herd, trading on irrelevant information. Ironically, this causes asset prices to be less informative than they would be without the mark-to-market feature.

Suggested Citation

  • Gary Gorton & Ping He & Lixin Huang, 2006. "Asset Prices When Agents are Marked-to-Market," NBER Working Papers 12075, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12075
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Gary Gorton, 2008. "The panic of 2007," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 131-262.
    2. Michiel Bijlsma & Wim Suyker, 2008. "The credit crisis and the Dutch economy... in eight frequently asked questions," CPB Memorandum 210.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    3. Stephen Golub & Ayse Kaya & Michael Reay, 2015. "What were they thinking? The Federal Reserve in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(4), pages 657-692, August.
    4. Guillaume Plantin & Haresh Sapra & Hyun Song Shin, 2008. "Marking‐to‐Market: Panacea or Pandora's Box?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(2), pages 435-460, May.
    5. Henk Kox & George van Leeuwen, 2012. "Dynamic market selection in EU business services," CPB Discussion Paper 210.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    6. Micah L. Ingalls & Michael B. Dwyer, 2016. "Missing the forest for the trees? Navigating the trade-offs between mitigation and adaptation under REDD," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 136(2), pages 353-366, May.
    7. Michiel Bijlsma & Jeroen Klomp & Sijmen Duineveld, 2010. "Systemic risk in the financial sector; a review and synthesis," CPB Document 210.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    8. Dasgupta, Amil & Prat, Andrea, 2008. "Information aggregation in financial markets with career concerns," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 143(1), pages 83-113, November.
    9. Eichengreen, Barry & Park, Donghyun & Shin, Kwanho, 2017. "Should the dangers of deflation be dismissed?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 287-307.
    10. Amil Dasgupta & Andrea Prat & Michela Verardo, 2011. "Institutional Trade Persistence and Long‐Term Equity Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(2), pages 635-653, April.

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