The Social Cost of Near-Rational Investment

Tarek Hassan and Thomas M. Mertens

American Economic Review, 2017, vol. 107, issue 4, 1059-1103

Abstract: We show that the stock market may fail to aggregate information even if it appears to be efficient, and that the resulting decrease in the information content of prices may drastically reduce welfare. We solve a macroeconomic model in which information about fundamentals is dispersed and households make small, correlated errors when forming expectations about future productivity. As information aggregates in the market, these errors amplify and crowd out the information content of stock prices. When prices reflect less information, the conditional variance of stock returns rises, causing an increase in uncertainty and costly distortions in consumption, capital accumulation, and labor supply.

JEL-codes: D14 D83 D84 E21 E22 E24 G14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.20110433
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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Related works:
Working Paper: The Social Cost of Near-Rational Investment (2016)
Working Paper: The Social Cost of Near-Rational Investment (2014)
Working Paper: The Social Cost of Near-Rational Investment (2011)
Working Paper: The Social Cost of Near-Rational Investment (2010)
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