IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/3250.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Herd on the Street: Informational Inefficiencies in a Market with Short-Term Speculation

Author

Listed:
  • Kenneth A. Froot
  • David S. Scharfstein
  • Jeremy C. Stein

Abstract

Standard models of informed speculation suggest that traders try to learn information that others do not have. This result implicitly relies on the assumption that speculators have long horizons, i.e, can hold the asset forever. By contrast, we show that if speculators have short horizons, they may herd on the same information, trying to learn what other informed traders also know. There can be multiple herding equilibria, and herding speculators may even choose to study information that is completely unrelated to fundamentals. These equilibria are informationally inefficient.

Suggested Citation

  • Kenneth A. Froot & David S. Scharfstein & Jeremy C. Stein, 1990. "Herd on the Street: Informational Inefficiencies in a Market with Short-Term Speculation," NBER Working Papers 3250, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3250
    Note: ITI ME IFM
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w3250.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joseph Farrell & Garth Saloner, 1985. "Standardization, Compatibility, and Innovation," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 16(1), pages 70-83, Spring.
    2. Marco Pagano, 1989. "Endogenous Market Thinness and Stock Price Volatility," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 56(2), pages 269-287.
    3. Olivier J. Blanchard & Mark W. Watson, 1982. "Bubbles, Rational Expectations and Financial Markets," NBER Working Papers 0945, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. 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.
    5. Russell Cooper & Andrew John, 1988. "Coordinating Coordination Failures in Keynesian Models," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 103(3), pages 441-463.
    6. Jeremy C. Stein, 1989. "Efficient Capital Markets, Inefficient Firms: A Model of Myopic Corporate Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 104(4), pages 655-669.
    7. Stein, Jeremy C, 1987. "Informational Externalities and Welfare-Reducing Speculation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(6), pages 1123-1145, December.
    8. Hellwig, Martin F., 1980. "On the aggregation of information in competitive markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 477-498, June.
    9. Bulow, Jeremy I & Geanakoplos, John D & Klemperer, Paul D, 1985. "Multimarket Oligopoly: Strategic Substitutes and Complements," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(3), pages 488-511, June.
    10. Scharfstein, David S & Stein, Jeremy C, 1990. "Herd Behavior and Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(3), pages 465-479, June.
    11. Narayanan, M P, 1985. "Observability and the Payback Criterion," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(3), pages 309-323, July.
    12. Tirole, Jean, 1982. "On the Possibility of Speculation under Rational Expectations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(5), pages 1163-1181, September.
    13. Verrecchia, Robert E, 1982. "Information Acquisition in a Noisy Rational Expectations Economy," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1415-1430, November.
    14. Katz, Michael L & Shapiro, Carl, 1985. "Network Externalities, Competition, and Compatibility," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(3), pages 424-440, June.
    15. J. Bradford De Long & Andrei Shleifer & Lawrence H. Summers & Robert J. Waldmann, 1987. "The Economic Consequences of Noise Traders," NBER Working Papers 2395, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Kyle, Albert S, 1985. "Continuous Auctions and Insider Trading," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1315-1335, November.
    17. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1990. "Equilibrium Short Horizons of Investors and Firms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 148-153, May.
    18. Bengt Holmstrom & Joan Ricart i Costa, 1986. "Managerial Incentives and Capital Management," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 101(4), pages 835-860.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Juan Dubra & Helios Herrera, 2002. "Market Participation, Information and Volatility," Working Papers 0206, Centro de Investigacion Economica, ITAM.
    2. Giovanni Cespa & Xavier Vives, 2011. "Expectations, Liquidity, and Short-term Trading," CESifo Working Paper Series 3390, CESifo.
    3. Vives, Xavier, 1997. "Learning from Others: A Welfare Analysis," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 177-200, August.
    4. Koptyug, Nikita & Persson, Lars & Tåg, Joacim, 2020. "Should we worry about the decline of the public corporation? A brief survey of the economics and external effects of the stock market," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    5. 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.
    6. Peress, Joel & Schmidt, Daniel, 2021. "Noise traders incarnate: Describing a realistic noise trading process," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    7. Diego García & Francesco Sangiorgi & Branko Urošević, 2007. "Overconfidence and Market Efficiency with Heterogeneous Agents," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 30(2), pages 313-336, February.
    8. Antonio Gargano & Alberto G. Rossi & Russ Wermers, 2017. "The Freedom of Information Act and the Race Toward Information Acquisition," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(6), pages 2179-2228.
    9. Nicolae Gârleanu & Lasse Heje Pedersen, 2018. "Efficiently Inefficient Markets for Assets and Asset Management," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 73(4), pages 1663-1712, August.
    10. Verrecchia, Robert E., 2001. "Essays on disclosure," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1-3), pages 97-180, December.
    11. Martin Dierker, 2006. "Endogenous Information Acquisition with Cournot Competition," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 2(4), pages 369-395, October.
    12. Doron Israeli & Ron Kasznik & Suhas A. Sridharan, 2022. "Unexpected distractions and investor attention to corporate announcements," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 477-518, June.
    13. Giovanni Cespa & Xavier Vives, 2015. "The Beauty Contest and Short-Term Trading," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(5), pages 2099-2154, October.
    14. Tarek A. Hassan & Thomas M. Mertens, 2017. "The Social Cost of Near-Rational Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(4), pages 1059-1103, April.
    15. Vayanos, Dimitri & Wang, Jiang, 2013. "Market Liquidity—Theory and Empirical Evidence ," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1289-1361, Elsevier.
    16. Blankespoor, Elizabeth & deHaan, Ed & Marinovic, Iván, 2020. "Disclosure processing costs, investors’ information choice, and equity market outcomes: A review," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2).
    17. Ardalan, Kavous, 1998. "Financial markets with asymmetric information: An expository review of seminal models," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 23-51.
    18. Angeletos, G.-M. & Lian, C., 2016. "Incomplete Information in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1065-1240, Elsevier.
    19. Drew Fudenberg, 2015. "Tirole's Industrial Regulation and Organization Legacy in Economics," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 117(3), pages 771-800, July.
    20. Han, Bing & Tang, Ya & Yang, Liyan, 2016. "Public information and uninformed trading: Implications for market liquidity and price efficiency," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 604-643.

    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:3250. 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.