Lynn Stout, writing in the Harvard Business Review’s blog, claims that hedge funds are uniquely “criminogenic” environments. (Not surprisingly, Frank Pasquale seems reflexively to approve):
My research, shows that people’s circumstances affect whether they are likely to act prosocially. And some hedge funds provided the circumstances for encouraging an antisocial behavior like not obeying the laws against insider trading, according to these investigations.
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Recognizing that some hedge funds present social environments that encourage unethical behavior allows us to identify new and better ways to address the perennial problem of insider trading. For example, because traders listen to instructions from their managers and investors, insider trading would be less of a problem if those managers and investors could be given greater incentive to urge their own traders to comply with the law, perhaps by holding the managers and investors — not just the individual traders — accountable for insider trading. Similarly, because traders mimic the behavior of other traders, devoting the enforcement resources necessary to discover and remove any “bad apples” before they spoil the rest of the barrel is essential; if the current round of investigations leads to convictions, it is likely to have a substantial impact on trader behavior, at least for a while. Finally, insider trading will be easier to deter if we combat the common but mistaken perception that it is a “victimless” crime.
Rather than re-post the whole article, I’ll direct you there to see why she thinks hedge funds are so uniquely anti-social. Then I urge you to ask yourself whether she has actually demonstrated anything of the sort. Really what she demonstrates, if anything, is that agency costs exist. Oh, and people learn from their peers. Remarkable! And this is different than . . . the rest of the world, how? There are Jewish people in the world, a lot of them work on Wall Street, and many of them attend synagogue. No doubt Jews mimic the behavior of other Jews. Bernie Madoff was Jewish. The SEC should be raiding temples all across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut!
The point is that she has no point, and directing her pointless observations toward hedge funds in particular is just silly (and/or politically expedient). There are bad apples everywhere. There are agency costs everywhere. A police state could probably reduce the consequences of these problems (but don’t forget corruption (i.e., bad apples) in the government!). The question is whether it’s worth it, and that requires a far more subtle analysis than Stout provides here.
And all of this is because insider trading really needs to be eradicated, according to Stout:
Of course, insider trading isn’t really victimless: for every trader who reaps a gain using insider information, some investor on the other side of the trade must lose. But because the losing investor is distant and anonymous, it’s easy to mistakenly feel that insider trading isn’t really doing harm.
Actually, the reason most people feel that insider trading isn’t really doing harm is because it isn’t.
I’ll leave the synopsis of the argument to Steve Bainbridge. On the adverse selection argument, see Stanislav Dolgopolov. Sure, there is debate. Empirics are hard to come by. But the weight of the evidence and theory, especially accounting for enforcement costs (one study even seems to suggest that making insider trading illegal actually induces more insider trading to occur (and impedes M&A activity)), is decidedly against Stout’s naked assertion. The follow on claim that, in essence, agency costs justify stepped up dawn raids at hedge funds is even more baseless.
Related Articles
- How Hedge Funds Create Criminals (blogs.hbr.org)
