Donald J. Boudreaux escribe en el Wall Street Journal una persuasiva defensa del "insider trading" (uso de información privilegiada o compra-venta de valores haciendo uso de información no-pública), criminalizada por las autoridades. El inversor Raj Rajaratnam ha sido recientemente detenido por practicarlo.
Numerosos economistas y juristas han defendido la legalización del uso de información privilegiada, entre ellos Henry manne, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Daniel Fischel y Walter Block. Se da la paradoja de que el uso de información privilegiada es perfectamente legal en otros ámbitos, como el mercado inmobiliario (por tomar el ejemplo de Stanislav Dolgopolov, si un geólogo descubre petróleo bajo una finca y hace una oferta a su propietario sin divulgar la información, está haciendo un uso legal de "información no-pública". Prohibir el uso de información privilegiada también puede considerarse un atentado contra la libertad de expresión (comunicar a alguien una información no protegida por la compañía y que es relevante para el precio de una acción al día siguiente). En cualquier caso, prohibir el uso de información privilegiada repercute negativamente en la pronta y correcta valoración de activos de la compañías.
Extracto varios párrafos del artículo de Boudreaux. Es largo, pero vale la pena.El "insider trading" contribuye a valorar correctamente los activos:
Time to stop telling horror stories. Federal agents are wasting their time slapping handcuffs on hedge fund traders like Raj Rajaratnam, the financier charged last week with trading on nonpublic information involving IBM, Google and other big companies. The reassuring truth: Insider trading is impossible to police and helpful to markets and investors. Parsing the difference between legal and illegal insider trading is futile—and a disservice to all investors. Far from being so injurious to the economy that its practice must be criminalized, insiders buying and selling stocks based on their knowledge play a critical role in keeping asset prices honest—in keeping prices from lying to the public about corporate realities. (...)
Escándalos como los de Enron serían menos frecuentes si se permitiera que los empleados actúen haciendo uso de sus conocimientos exclusivos:Suppose that unscrupulous management drives Acme Inc. to the verge of bankruptcy. Being unscrupulous, Acme's managers succeed for a time in hiding its perilous financial condition from the public. During this lying time, Acme's share price will be too high. Investors will buy Acme shares at prices that conceal the company's imminent doom. Creditors will extend financing to Acme on terms that do not compensate those creditors for the true risks that they are unknowingly undertaking. Perhaps some of Acme's employees will turn down good job offers at other firms in order to remain at what they are misled to believe is a financially solid Acme Inc.
Eventually, of course, those misled investors, creditors and workers will suffer financial losses. But the economy as a whole loses, too. Capital that would otherwise have been invested in firms more productive than Acme Inc. never gets to those firms. So compared with what would have happened had people not been misled by Acme's deceitfully high share price, those better-run firms don't enhance their efficiencies as much. They don't expand their operations as much. They don't create as many good jobs. Consumers don't enjoy the increased outputs, improved product qualities and lower prices that would otherwise have resulted.
La prohibición es sesgada: puede detectarse cuando alguien compra o vende un valor haciendo uso de información privilegiada, pero no puede detectarse cuando alguien no compra o no vende un valor haciendo uso de la misma información.As argued forcefully by Henry Manne in his 1966 book "Insider Trading and the Stock Market," prohibitions on insider trading prevent asset prices from adjusting in this way. Mr. Manne, dean emeritus at George Mason University School of Law, pointed out that when insiders trade on their nonpublic, nonproprietary information, they cause asset prices to reflect that information sooner than otherwise and therefore prompt other market participants to make better decisions.
According to Mr. Manne, corporate scandals such as Enron and Global Crossing would occur much less frequently and impose fewer costs if the government didn't prohibit insider trading. As Mr. Manne said a few years ago in a radio interview, "I don't think the scandals would ever have erupted if we had allowed insider trading because there would be plenty of people in those companies who would know exactly what was going on, and who couldn't resist the temptation to get rich by trading on the information, and the stock market would have reflected those problems months and months earlier than they did under this cockamamie regulatory system we have."
Hay información que la empresa no quiere que se divulgue o se utilice. En ese caso los estatutos de la propia empresa pueden prohibir su uso del mismo modo que se protege información confidencial como diseño de los productos, formulas o contraseñas de cuentas bancarias.Not only do insider-trading prohibitions slow economic growth, promote corporate mismanagement and discourage investment diversification, their application also is unavoidably biased. (...)
The insider who learns that the Food and Drug Administration will approve a new blockbuster drug developed by a major drug company, for example, obviously profits from this information if it prompts him to buy 1,000 shares of the company that he otherwise wouldn't have bought. So, too, though, does the insider profit who, upon learning the same information, abandons her plans to sell 1,000 shares of the company. But because insider "nontrading" is undetectable, only the former insider is practically subject to prosecution and punishment.
Discovering what types of inside information are proprietary and which are not proprietary—and, hence, which types of information are appropriate to protect and which not to protect from insider trading—can be left to corporations themselves.
Each corporation should be free to specify in its by-laws the types of information that insiders may not trade on. Any insiders who trade on such information would violate that firm's by-laws and, hence, subject themselves to suit by that firm. Corporations whose by-laws prohibit all or some insider trading will have standing to sue anyone who violates their by-laws. People who trade on inside information not protected by corporate by-laws would be acting perfectly legally.
Las empresas, sin embargo, no tienen incentivos para ocultar y proteger toda la informacion y que nunca pueda usarse para comprar y vender valores.
Won't corporations simply make all of their inside information off-limits to inside trading?
No. The reason is that corporations must compete for that most demanding and vigilant of all clients: capital. Shares in a corporation whose by-laws prevent insiders from trading on, say, knowledge of executive malfeasance will be a riskier—and a less attractive—investment than shares in a corporation that doesn't proscribe such insider trading. Corporations that allow trading on inside knowledge will enjoy a lower cost of capital than will corporations that prevent such trading.
Competition is a beautiful thing: It will punish firms that are either overly inclusive or under-inclusive in the sorts of information that they shield from inside trading.
