Global stock market in 1990-s

Abstract

The 1990s became a period of long-term recovery, the main driving force of which was the high-tech companies of the so-called «new economy», mainly associated with information technology and Internet at the global stock market. Such innovations have led to unrealistic expectations of the profitability of new companies from the sale of goods and services on the Internet. This became a prerequisite for a speculative boom in equity markets in developed financial systems. The boom intensified the mass privatization of state-owned enterprises in UK, Germany, France and some other countries. The capitalization of the global stock market increased more than ten times although the world GDP grew only 2.5 times during two decades, from 1980 to 2000. Though the stock market is the source of capital only in the countries with the Anglo-American model of financial markets (for countries of continental Europe and Japan such sources are bank loans), stock markets increased in all countries with developed financial systems. The systematic analysis of such key indicators as market capitalization and liquidity is required for an objective assessment of such rise in stock markets. But statistical information at stock markets is often not systematized and fragmentary. Therefore, the author (based on the official statistics of such international financial organizations as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the World Federation of Exchanges) has calculated and systematically analyzed capitalization and liquidity as the main indicators of the stock market for the largest countries with developed financial systems (USA, Great Britain, Germany, France, Japan). The paper displays the differences in the mechanisms of attraction of capital determined by the different models of financial markets (decentralized Anglo-American and centralized European) as well as the features of the composition of the main investors in the world stock markets.