This paper studies the properties of the continuous double auction trading mechanishm using an artificial market populated by heterogeneous computational agents. In particular, we investigate how changes in the population of traders and in market microstructure characteristics affect price dynamics, information dissemination and distribution of wealth across agents. In our computer simulated market only a small fraction of the population observe the risky asset’s fundamental value with noise, while the rest of agents try to forecast the asset’s price from past transaction data. In contrast to other artificial markets, we assume that the risky asset pays no dividend, so agents cannot learn from past transaction prices and subsequent dividend payments. We find that private information can effectively disseminate in the market unless market regulation prevents informed investors from short selling or borrowing the asset, and these investors do not constitute a critical mass. In such case, not only are markets less efficient informationally, but may even experience crashes and bubbles. Finally, increased informational efficiency has a negative impact on informed agents’ trading profits and a positive impact on artificial intelligent agents’ profits.
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Paper provided by Universidad Carlos III, Departamento de Economía de la Empresa in its series Business Economics Working Papers with number
wb057819.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
S. Baranzoni & P. Bianchi & L. Lambertini, 2000.
"Market Structure,"
Working Papers
368, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
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