The Efficient Market Hypothesis: Review of Specialized Literature and Empirical Research☆

Abstract The concept of efficiency is central to finance. For many years, academics and economics have studied the concept of efficiency applied to capital markets, efficient market hypothesis (EMH) being a major research area in the specialized literature. There are many opposite views regarding the EMH, some of them rejecting it, other supporting it. But how it all started and the way studies evolved during the last decade is very important. This survey examines the growing body of empirical research on efficient market hypothesis. The conclusion of this article is that testing for market efficiency is difficult and there is a high possibility that, because of changes in market / economic conditions, new theoretical model should be developed to take into consideration all changes. As a reasons, it is important to continue the empirical studies to decide if capital markets are or are not informational efficient.

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