Fight or freeze? Individual differences in investors' motivational systems and trading in experimental asset markets

We analyze investors’ trading behavior, particularly their coping with fundamental shocks in asset value, depending on individual differences in the sensitivity of two basic neurophysiological systems—the Behavioral Approach System (BAS), the ‘driving force’ of human behavior, and the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS), its ‘braking system’. By analyzing 15 independent experimental asset markets with a total of 171 participants, we find that differences in BAS and BIS sensitivity affect trading in both ‘normal’ and shock-trading environments: under normal trading conditions, individuals with a more sensitive BAS are more active traders, prefer riskier portfolios, and generate higher individual overall profits. High BIS subjects generate lower scalping and overall profits. Fundamental shocks generally reinforce the preference of high BAS investors for riskier portfolios, while positive shocks ‘unfreeze’ high BIS investors: they trade more frequently and generate higher profits. At the market level, normal trading in markets with a high BIS median is associated with lower volatility, compared to low BIS median markets, while greater concentration of traders’ BAS scores around the mean is associated with better efficiency and liquidity, compared to markets with lower BAS kurtosis. In high BIS median markets, positive shocks lead to improved efficiency, lower bid-ask spread, and lower volatility. We observe no significant differences in market-level reactions to negative shocks

A contextual theory of organizational learning from failures and successes: A study of acquisition completion in the global newspaper industry, 1981-2008

This study develops and tests theory about the context-specificity and outcome-dependence of experiential learning in acquisition processes. First, we investigate whether learning from experience gained in different acquisition contexts is limited to influencing subsequent outcomes of same-context transactions. Second, we analyze whether learning patterns in response to prior successes and failures differ across acquisition contexts, depending on two properties of these contexts—the degree of structural variance and the level of stimulation of deliberate learning. Learning is assessed with respect to an underexplored organizational goal variable in acquisitions: completion of a publicly announced transaction. An analysis of 4,973 acquisition attempts in the newspaper industry in 1981–2008 largely supports our theory