Impediments to Financial Trade: Theory and Applications

Abstract

We propose a tractable model of an informationally inefficient market featuring non-revealing prices, no noise traders, and general assumptions on preferences and payoff distributions. We show the equivalence between our model and a substantially simpler model whereby investors face distortionary investment taxes depending both on their identity and the asset class. This equivalence allows us to account for such phenomena as under-diversification. We further employ the model to assess approaches to performance evaluation, and find that it provides a theoretical basis for some intuitive practices adopted by finance professionals, such as style analysis.