This paper studies the welfare economics of informed trading in a stock market. We provide a model in which all agents are rational and trade either to exploit information or to hedge risk. We analyze the effect of more informative prices on investment, given that this dependence will itself be...

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...

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 trading in a nancial market where some agents have superior information. We show that in some cases a tax on speculators may actually increase...

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 paper studies the welfare economics of informed trading in a stock market. We model the effect of more informative prices on investment, given that this dependence will itself be reflected in equilibrium prices. We show that in rational expectations equilibrium with price-taking competitive...

A substantial literature addresses the negative effect on welfare of the release of information in a competitive market economy. We show that the value of information in this setting is typically positive if asset markets are sufficiently incomplete. More specifically, for any competitive...

A speculative security is an asset whose payoff depends on a random shock uncorrelated with economic fundamentals (a sunspot) about which some traders have superior information. In this paper we show that agents may find it desirable to trade such a security in spite of the fact that it is a...