Should We Worry about the Decline of the Public Corporation? A Brief Survey of the Economics and External Effects of the Stock Market

Nikita Koptyug, Lars Persson and Joacim Tåg

No 1298, Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: In recent years, the number of listed companies has been declining in many countries across the world. This paper provides a selective survey of the literature on the real economic effects of the stock market to assess the potential effects of this decline and determine whether it is likely to continue. The leading economic role of the stock market’s primary market, in which firms raise capital by issuing new shares, is to help growing firms secure financing. We discuss providing and certifying information, coordinating investors, and easing the redeployment of capital as the means through which capital allocation can be achieved efficiently. The main economic role of the stock market’s secondary market, the trade in existing shares, is to provide liquidity to shareholders, to aid in price discovery, and to provide diversification opportunities. Positive external effects from an active stock market may arise on consumers, labour and private firm due to increased corporate investment, more social responsible business strategies and a more positive business climate. Negative external effects on capital allocation and productivity can arise from short-termism, market mispricing, and increased cross-ownership. Local stock markets can spur innovation and foreign direct investment (FDI) and reduce the risk of early cross-border acquisitions. Given the myriad of useful economic functions the stock market performs, a future entirely absent of public companies is difficult to imagine and the decline is therefore likely at some point to come to an end. Whether we need to worry about the decline depends on the relative importance of the positive and negative external effects, a topic we feel warrants more research.

Keywords: External effects; Growth; Productivity; Real effects; Stock market (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G10 G30 L10 L50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2019-06-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cfn
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ifn.se/wfiles/wp/wp1298.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Should we worry about the decline of the public corporation? A brief survey of the economics and external effects of the stock market (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1298

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics Research Institute of Industrial Economics, Box 55665, SE-102 15 Stockholm, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Elisabeth Gustafsson ().