Working Paper

Bubbles as payoffs at infinity

Abstract: We define rational bubbles to be securities with payoffs occurring in the infinitely distant future and investigate the behavior of bubble values. We extend our analysis to a setting of uncertainty. In an infinite-horizon arbitrage-free model of asset prices, we interpret the money market account as the value of a particular bubble; a similar interpretation holds for other assets related to the state-price deflator and to payoffs on bonds maturing in the distant future. We present three applications of this characterization of bubbles.

Keywords: capital asset pricing model; Money market;

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.)

Part of Series: Finance and Economics Discussion Series

Publication Date: 1996

Number: 96-9