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  3. Journal of Economic Perspectives
  4. Summer 1988
  5. Comments on the Market Crash: Six Months After

Journal of Economic Perspectives

ISSN 0895-3309 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7965 (Online)

Comments on the Market Crash: Six Months After

  • Hayne Leland
  • Mark Rubinstein
Journal of Economic Perspectives
vol. 2, no. 3, Summer 1988
(pp. 45–50)
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Abstract

Six months after the market crash of October 1987, we are still sifting through the debris searching for its cause. Two theories of the crash sound plausible -- one based on a market panic and the other based on large trader transactions -- though there is other evidence that is difficult to reconcile. If we are to believe the market panic theory or the Brady Commission's theory that the crash was primarily caused by a few large traders, we must strongly reject the standard model. We need to build models of financial equilibrium which are more sensitive to real life trading mechanisms, which account more realistically for the formation of expectations, and which recognize that, at any one time, there is a limited pool of investors available with the ability to evaluate stocks and take appropriate action in the market.

Citation

Leland, Hayne, and Mark Rubinstein. 1988. "Comments on the Market Crash: Six Months After." Journal of Economic Perspectives 2 (3): 45–50. DOI: 10.1257/jep.2.3.45

JEL Classification

  • 313 Capital Markets--Empirical Studies, Including Regulation