Existence of an Equilibrium for Lower Semicontinuous Information Acquisition Functions

International audienceWe consider a two-period model in which a continuum of agents trade in a context of costly information acquisition and systematic heterogeneous expectations biases. Because of systematic biases agents are supposed not to learn from others' decisions. In a previous work under somehow strong technical assumptions a market equilibrium was proved to exist and the supply and demand functions were proved to be strictly monotonic with respect to the price. Here we extend these results under very weak technical assumptions. We also prove that the equilibrium price maximizes the trading volume and further additional properties (such as the antimonotonicity of the trading volume with respect to the marginal information price)

Once Bitten, Twice Shy: Experiences of a Banking Crisis and Expectations of Future Crises

Survey data from Bulgaria show that people who had experienced a loss during a banking crisis are significantly more likely to expect a new crisis. This result holds despite 12 years between the earlier crisis and the survey, and the dramatically improved performance of the financial sector and the economy in the meantime. However, we find that earlier experiences affect expectations only for less informed individuals. Individuals who are more informed about the economy are unaffected by their prior experiences.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/64382/1/wp969.pd

Strategic Investor Behaviour and the Volume-Volatility Relation in Equity Markets

We examine the volume-volatility relation using detailed data from a limit order driven equity market. Estimates of the intraday slope of the demand and supply schedules of the order book are found to capture regularities in spreads, trade size and submission strategies which are believed to be related to asymmetric information. On a daily level, the order book slope should also captures differences in dispersion of beliefs about stock values. The relationship between our daily slope measure and the contemporaneous volatility across companies and time supports models where strategic trading and dispersion of beliefs increase both volume and volatility.Market Microstructure; Volume-volatility relation; Equity trading; Asymmetric Information

ONCE BITTEN, TWICE SHY: EXPERIENCES OF A BANKING CRISIS AND EXPECTATIONS OF FUTURE CRISES

Survey data from Bulgaria show that people who had experienced a loss during a banking crisis are significantly more likely to expect a new crisis. This result holds despite 12 years between the earlier crisis and the survey, and the dramatically improved performance of the financial sector and the economy in the meantime. However, we find that earlier experiences affect expectations only for less informed individuals. Individuals who are more informed about the economy are unaffected by their prior experiences.banking crisis, trust, expectations

Complex systems in financial economics: Applications to interbank and stock markets

Complex systems are characterised by strong interaction at the micro level that can induce large changes at the macro level. This thesis applies the theory of complex systems to the interbank market (Part I) and the stock market (Part II). Evidence found in data from the Netherlands and the US makes clear in what sense these markets are complex systems. The observed phenomena are explained by modelling the adaptive behaviour of financial agents, for example how they form their trading relationships or how they choose investment strategies. The applications help to understand the mechanisms behind the emergence of the financial-economic crisis in 2007 and 2008, and relate to the debate on policy measures aiming to prevent a future crisis of this kind

Liability taxes, risk, and the cost of banking crises

This study investigates the effects on risk and financial stability of the taxes on bank liabilities introduced across European countries after the global financial crisis. Using a difference -in-differences setup, we show that banks responded to the implementation of liability taxes by reducing their interbank exposure, and by increasing both equity, at least in the short term, and the risk weight of their assets. When we consider these adjustments in a microsimulation model for bank portfolio losses, we find that liability taxes reduce risk in the banking sector and could therefore decrease the cost of crises

Time Variation of Liquidity in the Private Real Estate Market: An Empirical Investigation

This paper characterizes the behavior of and evaluates competing explanations for time variation in private real estate market liquidity documented in Fisher et al. (2003). In the first, sellers base their estimates of value on observations of signals from the market, but the presence of noise means a change in signal is not fully reflected in sellers?updated value estimates. The second incorporates the option value of waiting, or opportunity cost of not transacting, recently introduced by Krainer (2001) and Novy-Marx (2004), into seller’s optimal valuation strategy. In the third, we allow for the possibility of investors who are not fully rational in the sense that they trade on market sentiment and we link market-wide liquidity to investor sentiment with higher liquidity being due to the presence of irrationally over-optimistic traders. In this model measures of aggregate liquidity act as an indicator of the relative presence (or absence) of sentiment-based traders in the market place and therefore the divergence of asset price from fundamental value. Empirical findings are generally consistent with models of optimal valuation with rational updating and provide support for the opportunity cost approach.

The dark and the bright side of liquidity risks: evidence from open-end real estate funds in Germany

We use a unique and comprehensive data set on open-end real estate funds in Germany to study a liquidity crisis that hit this industry between 2005 and 2006. Since this industry is comparably unregulated our data set permits us to contrast competing explanations of liquidity crisis. We find that fundamental factors matter for the liquidity outflow in normal times. During the crisis, however, they do not play a role. During the panic only strategic complementarities drive withdrawals. Furthermore, we find that funds with a higher load fee suffer from substantially larger outflows in the crisis period, while a higher load fee reduces gross outflows in normal times. As institutional investors predominately invest in funds with a low load fee this is in line with recent theory arguing that complementarities are mitigated by the involvement of large institutional investors who can at least partially correct for the coordination failure resulting from complementarities. --Liquidity crisis,runs,strategic complementarities

The microstructure approach to exchange rates: a survey from a central bank’s viewpoint

The application of the market microstructure theory to foreign exchange markets in the last few years has introduced a new approach to the analysis of exchange rates. The most important variable of the microstructure analysis, the so-called order flow has proven to be suitable for explaining a significant part of exchange rate changes, not only for high frequency data, but also at longer time horizons that are relevant for macro-economic analysis. Microstructure theory is thus extremely successful from an empirical point of view, especially when compared to traditional exchange rate models. The aim of our study is to provide an introduction to the microstructure-based analysis of exchange rates, emphasising those aspects which may be the most relevant for central banks. In addition to an introduction to the theoretical background of the microstructure approach and the presentation of the key empirical results, we also intend to cast light upon the questions which are important for central banks and which can be tackled successfully using this framework. On the basis of the literature's findings, we present the answers given by the microstructure approach to, among others, questions concerning the efficiency of central bank intervention, the effects of economic news on exchange rates, and the role of different currency market participants in exchange rate developments.exchange rate, order flow, microstructure.

Nonlinear Dynamic in the Chilean Stock Market: Evidence from Returns and Trading Volume

In this paper we investigate the possible presence of nonlinear dynamics for stock index returns and trading volume at the Chilean Stock Market. To capture any nonlinear behavior in the series we estimate Smooth Transition Autoregressive (STAR) models and test them against the linear alternatives. As a complement to this univariate approach, we use Markov-Switching Vector Autoregressive (MS-VAR) models to investigate the empirical relationship between both variables. The results clearly show that the Chilean Stock Market is characterized by the presence of nonlinear patters in both series (trading volume and stock returns) as well as in their joint relationship. The presence of nonlinearities is a key issue in testing the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), according to which stock returns and trading volume should be not related. Previous researches on the efficiency using data from the Chilean stock market, using linear models, support the hypothesis. However, the nonlinear patters we found in the data are a clear signal of misspecification problems in a testing procedure based on a linear approach.