Many economists believe that the stock market plays an important role in efficiently allocating capital to its most productive uses. This standard story of the stock market was called into question by events in the late 1990s, when some observers believed that stock market overvaluation - or a...

It is commonly believed that stock prices help firms' managers make more efficient real investment decisions, because they aggregate information about fundamentals that is not otherwise known to managers. This paper identifies a limitation to this view. It shows that if informed traders...