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Working Paper
What's in a name? An experimental examination of investment behavior
A fundamental unresolved issue is whether information asymmetries underlie investors' predisposition to invest close to home (i.e., domestically or locally). The authors conduct experiments in the United States and Canada to investigate agents' portfolio allocation decisions, controlling for the availability of information. Providing participants with information about a firm's home base, without disclosing its specific identity, is not sufficient to change investment behavior. Rather, participants need to know a firm's name and home base. Additional evidence indicates that participants are ...
Working Paper
Efficiency in index options markets and trading in stock baskets
Researchers have reported mispricing in index options markets. This study further examines the efficiency of the S&P 500 index options market by testing theoretical pricing relationships implied by no-arbitrage conditions. The effect of a traded stock basket, Standard and Poor's Depository Receipts (SPDRs), on the link between index and options markets is also examined. Pricing efficiency within options markets improves, and the evidence supports the hypothesis that a stock basket enhances the connection between markets. However, when transactions costs and short sales constraints are ...
Working Paper
Circuit breakers with uncertainty about the presence of informed agents: I know what you know . . . I think
This study conducts experimental asset markets to examine the effects of circuit breaker rules on market behavior when agents are uncertain about the presence of private information. Our results unequivocally indicate that circuit breakers fail to temper unwarranted price movements in periods without private information. Agents appear to mistakenly infer that others possess private information, causing price to move away from fundamental value. Allocative efficiencies in our markets are high across all regimes. Circuit breakers perform no useful function in our experimental asset markets.
Working Paper
Asset prices and informed traders' abilities: evidence from experimental asset markets
This study reports the results of fifteen experimental asset markets designed to investigate the effects of forecasts on market prices, traders' abilities to assess asset value, and the link between the two. Across the fifteen markets, the authors investigate alternative forecast-generating processes. In some markets the process produces an unbiased estimate of asset value and in others a biased estimate. The processes generating the biased forecasts, though, are less variable than the process generating the unbiased forecast. The authors find that, in general, period-end asset price reflects ...
Working Paper
A simultaneous equations analysis of analysts’ forecast bias and institutional ownership
In this paper we use a simultaneous equations model to examine the relationship between analysts' forecasting decisions and institutions' investment decisions. Neglecting their interaction results in model misspecification. We find that analysts' optimism concerning a firm's earnings responds positively to changes in the number of institutions holding the firm's stock. At the same time, institutional demand responds positively to increases in analysts' optimism. We also investigate several firm characteristics as determinants of analysts' and institutions' decisions. We conclude that ...
Working Paper
When the shoe is on the other foot: experimental evidence on evaluation disparities
Research provides evidence that the method chosen to elicit value has an important effect on a person?s valuation. We hypothesize that role has a crucial effect on decision makers? elicited values: Buyers prefer to pay less and sellers prefer to collect more. We conduct experimental sessions and replicate the disparity between willingness to pay and willingness to accept. We conduct additional sessions in which role is stripped away: Endowed decision makers provide values that are used to determine a price at which anonymous others transact. Importantly, decision makers? earnings in the ...
Working Paper
An experimental examination of the house money effect in a multi-period setting
There is evidence that risk-taking behavior is influenced by prior monetary gains and losses. When endowed with house money, people become more risk taking. This paper is the first to report a house money effect in a dynamic, financial setting. Using an experimental method, the authors compare market outcomes across sessions that differ in the level of cash endowment (low and high). Their experimental results provide strong support for a house money effect. Traders' bids, price predictions, and market prices are influenced by the amount of money that is provided prior to trading. However, ...
Journal Article
Evidence on the efficiency of index options markets
Index options have been one of the most successful of the many innovative financial instruments introduced over the last few decades, as their high trading volume indicates. Given their prominence, the pricing efficiency of these markets is of great importance. ; Detecting inefficient pricing, or mispricing, requires comparing a theoretically efficient price with prices of options traded in financial markets. One popular approach to deriving pricing relationships is based on a principle called no-arbitrage, which simply assumes that arbitrageurs enter the market and quickly eliminate ...