Rapidly rising stock prices in the 1990s raised worries about potential inflationary or destabilizing effects. The use of initial margin debt requirements by the Federal Reserve was proposed to reduce the run-up in stock prices. This paper evaluates the likely impact of margin debt requirements...

The stock market increase in the 1990s may have diverted funds from fixed investments in manufacturing to other investiments, such as share repurchases, and to firms with faster stock price gains. We find that overall investment remained lower than it could have been without the stock price...