A number of economists have supported the taxation of speculation in financial markets. We examine the welfare economics of such a tax in a model of a financial market where some agents have superior information and others have a hedging motive. We show that a tax on speculators may actually...

This article studies the welfare economics of informed stock market trading. We analyze the effect of more informative prices on investment, given that this dependence will itself be reflected in equilibrium prices. While a higher incidence of informed speculation always increases firm value...

A security market where the relative incidence of informed and uninformed trading determines liquidity may have more than one equilibrium. Equilibrium with high liquidity has a low bid-ask spread. This increases participation by traders who want to hedge risk exposure, as opposed to trading on...