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Estimating a structural model of herd behavior in financial markets
We develop a new methodology for estimating the importance of herd behavior in financial markets. Specifically, we build a structural model of informational herding that can be estimated with financial transaction data. In the model, rational herding arises because of information-event uncertainty. We estimate the model using 1995 stock market data for Ashland Inc., a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Herding occurs often and is particularly pervasive on certain days. In an information-event day, on average, 2 percent (4 percent) of informed traders herd-buy (sell). In 7 percent ...
Journal Article
Foreign exchange: macro puzzles, micro tools
This paper reviews recent progress in applying information-theoretic tools to long-standing exchange rate puzzles. I begin by distinguishing the traditional public information approach (e.g. monetary models, including new open economy models) from the newer dispersed information approach. (The latter focuses on how information is aggregated in the trading process.) I then review empirical results from the dispersed information approach and relate them to two key puzzles, the determination puzzle and the excess volatility puzzle. The dispersed information approach has made progress on both.
Working Paper
Computing moral-hazard problems using the Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition algorithm
Linear programming is an important method for computing solutions to private information problems. The method is applicable for arbitrary specifications of the references and technology. Unfortunately, as the cardinality of underlying sets increases the programs quickly become too large to compute. This paper demonstrates that moral-hazard problems have a structure that allows them to be computed using the Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition algorithm. This algorithm breaks the linear program into subproblems, greatly increasing the size of problems that may be practically computed. Connections to ...
Working Paper
Financial market breakdown due to strategy constraints and information asymmetry
This paper demonstrates the relevance of strategy constraints on market makers to the possibility of financial market breakdown when there is information asymmetry between market makers and investors; both the case of competitive market makers and the case of a monopolistic market marker are included. Specifically, the paper discusses three types of strategy constraints on the market makers and their implications for the equilibria. The results call attention to the need for more precise specifications of institutional environments (beyond information asymmetry and the mode of ...
Journal Article
What moves the bond market?
In an examination of the U.S. Treasury securities market, the authors attempt to explain the sharpest price changes and most active trading episodes. They find that each of the twenty-five largest price shocks and twenty-five greatest trading surges can be attributed to just-released macroeconomic announcements. They also measure the market's average reactions to theses announcements and analyze the extent to which the reactions depend on the degree of announcement surprise and on prevailing market conditions. The market's price and trading reactions are found to reflect differences of ...
Discussion Paper
Dynamic optimal taxation with private information
We study dynamic optimal taxation in a class of economies with private information. Constrained optimal allocations in these environments are complicated and history-dependent. Yet, we show that they can be implemented as competitive equilibria in market economies supplemented with simple tax systems. The market structure in these economies is similar to that in Bewley (1986): agents supply labor and trade risk-free claims to future consumption, subject to a budget constraint and a debt limit. Optimal taxes are conditioned only on two observable characteristicsan agents accumulated stock of ...
Working Paper
Information systems for risk management
Risk management information systems are designed to overcome the problem of aggregating data across diverse trading units. The design of an information system depends on the risk measurement methodology that a firm chooses. Inherent in the design of both a risk management information system and a risk measurement methodology is a tradeoff between the accuracy of the resulting measures of risk and the burden of computing them. Technical progress will make this tradeoff more favorable over time, leading firms to implement more accurate methodologies, such as full revaluation of nonlinear ...
Working Paper
Money talks
The authors study credible information transmission by a benevolent central bank. They consider two possibilities: direct revelation through an announcement, versus indirect information transmission through monetary policy. These two ways of transmitting information have very different consequences. Since the objectives of the central bank and those of individual investors are not always aligned, private investors might rationally ignore announcements by the central bank. In contrast, information transmission through changes in the interest rate creates a distortion, thus lending an amount of ...