Failure of Stock Prices to Discipline Managers in a Rational Expectations Economy
证明即使强有效的股票市场本身也不足以约束管理者，当管理者对投资者行为持有错误信念时，股价反而可能强化这些错误，需通过其他机制（如经理人市场、并购）来约束。
In this paper we show that even a strongly efficient stock market is, by itself, insufficient to discipline managers who may hold incorrect beliefs about investors' behavior and their decision rules. Instead of disciplining the managers, the stock market may generate prices that reinforce these incorrect beliefs. When this happens, the disciplining of managers must be accomplished through other mechanisms, such as through markets for managerial labor, mergers and takeovers, the financial press, and education. These alternative mechanisms may produce slower disciplinary reactions than the stock market. Several important classes of accounting phenomena seem consistent with a failure of the stock market to discipline managers promptly. We present in detail how the apparent failure of managers to make cashflow-maximizing LIFO-FIFO choices in a timely fashion is consistent with this theory. Our approach is also applicable to other financial reporting conundrums in which adverse managerial and stock market reactions were predicted in response to Financial Accounting Standard No. 2 (accounting for research and development outlays), Standard No.