[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/15821.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Limits of Arbitrage: The State of the Theory

Author

Listed:
  • Denis Gromb
  • Dimitri Vayanos
Abstract
We survey theoretical developments in the literature on the limits of arbitrage. This literature investigates how costs faced by arbitrageurs can prevent them from eliminating mispricings and providing liquidity to other investors. Research in this area is currently evolving into a broader agenda emphasizing the role of financial institutions and agency frictions for asset prices. This research has the potential to explain so-called "market anomalies" and inform welfare and policy debates about asset markets. We begin with examples of demand shocks that generate mispricings, arguing that they can stem from behavioral or from institutional considerations. We next survey, and nest within a simple model, the following costs faced by arbitrageurs: (i) risk, both fundamental and non-fundamental, (ii) short-selling costs, (iii) leverage and margin constraints, and (iv) constraints on equity capital. We finally discuss implications for welfare and policy, and suggest directions for future research.

Suggested Citation

  • Denis Gromb & Dimitri Vayanos, 2010. "Limits of Arbitrage: The State of the Theory," NBER Working Papers 15821, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15821
    Note: AP
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15821.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D6 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets
    • G2 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15821. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.