Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Herding and Contrarian Behaviour in Financial Markets

Contents:

Author Info

  • Park, A.
  • Sabourian, H.

Abstract

Rational herd behavior and informationally efficient security prices have long been considered to be mutually exclusive but for exceptional cases. In this paper we describe the conditions on the underlying information structure that are necessary and sufficient for informational herding and contrarianism. In a standard sequential security trading model, subject to sufficient noise trading, people herd if and only if, loosely, their information is sufficiently dispersed so that they consider extreme outcomes more likely than moderate ones. Likewise, people act as contrarians if and only if their information leads them to concentrate on middle values. Both herding and contrarianism generate more volatile prices, and they lower liquidity. They are also resilient phenomena, although by themselves herding trades are self enforcing whereas contrarian trades are self-defeating. We complete the characterization by providing conditions for the absence of herding and contrarianism.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/dae/repec/cam/pdf/cwpe0939.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge in its series Cambridge Working Papers in Economics with number 0939.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: 12 Oct 2009
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:cam:camdae:0939

Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/index.htm

Related research

Keywords: Social learning; herding; contrarians; asset price volatility; market transparency;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

References

No references listed on IDEAS
You can help add them by filling out this form.

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Walther, A., 2012. "Asset price manipulation with several traders," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1242, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
  2. Helena Veiga & Marc Vorsatz, 2010. "Information aggregation in experimental asset markets in the presence of a manipulator," Experimental Economics, Springer, vol. 13(4), pages 379-398, December.
  3. Andreas Park & Daniel Sgroi, 2008. "When Herding and Contrarianism Foster Market Efficiency: A Financial Trading Experiment," Working Papers tecipa-316, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
  4. Ippei Fujiwara & Hibiki Ichiue & Yoshiyuki Nakazono & Yosuke Shigemi, 2012. "Financial Markets Forecasts Revisited: Are they Rational, Herding or Bold?," IMES Discussion Paper Series 12-E-06, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.
  5. Lof, Matthijs, 2012. "Rational Speculators, Contrarians and Excess Volatility," MPRA Paper 43490, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  6. Testa, Alessia, 2012. "Path-Dependent Behavior with Asymmetric Information about Traders' Types," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 388, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
  7. Simon Jurkatis & Stephanie Kremer & Dieter Nautz, 2012. "Correlated Trades and Herd Behavior in the Stock Market," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2012-035, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.
  8. Baddeley, M. & Burke, C. & Schultz, W. & Tobler, P., 2012. "Herding in Financial Behaviour: A Behavioural and Neuroeconomic Analysis of Individual Differences," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1225, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cam:camdae:0939

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Howard Cobb).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.