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

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...

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 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...

In this paper we provide a characterization of the welfare properties of rational expectations equilibria of economies in which, prior to trading, agents have some information over the realization of uncertainity. We study a model with asymmetrically informed agents, treating symmetric...

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...

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...