IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/gwi/wpaper/2012-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Leverage and Asset Prices: An Experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Ana Fostel

    (Institute for International Economic Policy, George Washington University)

Abstract

This is the first paper to test the asset pricing implication of leverage in a laboratory. We show that as theory predicts, leverage increases asset prices: when an asset can be used as collateral (i.e., when the asset can be bought on margin), its price goes up. This increase is significant, and quantitatively close to what theory predicts. However, important deviations from the theory arise in the laboratory. First, the demand for the asset shifts when it can be used as a collateral, even though agents do not exhaust their purchasing power when collateralized borrowing is not allowed. Second, the spread between collateralizable and non-collateralizable assets does not increase during crises in contrast to what theory predicts.

Suggested Citation

  • Ana Fostel, 2012. "Leverage and Asset Prices: An Experiment," Working Papers 2012-1, The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy.
    • Handle: RePEc:gwi:wpaper:2012-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.gwu.edu/~iiep/assets/docs/papers/CFH2012_2_07_WP.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Plott, Charles R & Sunder, Shyam, 1982. "Efficiency of Experimental Security Markets with Insider Information: An Application of Rational-Expectations Models," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(4), pages 663-698, August.
    2. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Lasse Heje Pedersen, 2009. "Market Liquidity and Funding Liquidity," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(6), pages 2201-2238, June.
    3. Nicolae Gârleanu & Lasse Heje Pedersen, 2011. "Margin-based Asset Pricing and Deviations from the Law of One Price," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(6), pages 1980-2022.
    4. Vernon L. Smith, 1962. "An Experimental Study of Competitive Market Behavior," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70(2), pages 111-111.
    5. John Geanakoplos & Ana Fostel, 2008. "Leverage Cycles and the Anxious Economy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1211-1244, September.
    6. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Sean Crockett, 2013. "Price Dynamics In General Equilibrium Experiments," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 421-438, July.
    2. Bengui, Julien & Phan, Toan, 2018. "Asset pledgeability and endogenously leveraged bubbles," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 280-314.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Cipriani, Marco & Fostel, Ana & Houser, Daniel, 2021. "Leverage and asset prices: An experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 700-717.
    2. Halim, Edward & Riyanto, Yohanes Eko & Roy, Nilanjan, 2016. "Price Dynamics and Consumption Smoothing in Experimental Asset Markets," MPRA Paper 71631, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Ana Fostel & John Geanakoplos, 2012. "Tranching, CDS, and Asset Prices: How Financial Innovation Can Cause Bubbles and Crashes," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(1), pages 190-225, January.
    4. Fostel, Ana & Geanakoplos, John, 2012. "Why does bad news increase volatility and decrease leverage?," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(2), pages 501-525.
    5. Marco Cipriani & Antonio Guarino & Giovanni Guazzarotti & Federico Tagliati & Sven Fischer, 2018. "Informational Contagion in the Laboratory," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 22(3), pages 877-904.
    6. He, Zhiguo & Kelly, Bryan & Manela, Asaf, 2017. "Intermediary asset pricing: New evidence from many asset classes," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(1), pages 1-35.
    7. Edward Halim & Yohanes E. Riyanto & Nilanjan Roy, 2019. "Costly Information Acquisition, Social Networks, and Asset Prices: Experimental Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 74(4), pages 1975-2010, August.
    8. Johannes Brumm & Michael Grill & Felix Kubler & Karl Schmedders, 2023. "Re-use of collateral: Leverage, volatility, and welfare," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 47, pages 19-46, January.
    9. Choo, Lawrence, 2016. "Market competition for decision rights: An experiment based on the “Hat Puzzle Problem”," MPRA Paper 73408, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Johannes Brumm & Michael Grill & Felix Kubler & Karl Schmedders, 2015. "Collateral Requirements And Asset Prices," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 56(1), pages 1-25, February.
    11. Brumm, Johannes & Grill, Michael & Kubler, Felix & Schmedders, Karl, 2015. "Margin regulation and volatility," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 54-68.
    12. Amir Akbari & Francesca Carrieri & Aytek Malkhozov, 2017. "Reversals in Global Market Integration and Funding Liquidity," International Finance Discussion Papers 1202, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    13. Bian, Jiangze & Da, Zhi & He, Zhiguo & Lou, Dong & Shue, Kelly & Zhou, Hao, 2021. "Margin trading and leverage management," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 118851, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    14. Jianfeng Hu, 2020. "Is the synthetic stock price really lower than actual price?," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(12), pages 1809-1824, December.
    15. Huber, Juergen & Shubik, Martin & Sunder, Shyam, 2010. "Three minimal market institutions with human and algorithmic agents: Theory and experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 403-424, November.
    16. Ana Fostel & John Geanakoplos, 2013. "Leverage and Default in Binomial Economies: A Complete Characterization," Levine's Working Paper Archive 786969000000000755, David K. Levine.
    17. Jiangze Bian & Zhiguo He & Kelly Shue & Hao Zhou, 2018. "Leverage-Induced Fire Sales and Stock Market Crashes," NBER Working Papers 25040, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Thomas M. Eisenbach & Yuliy Sannikov, 2012. "Macroeconomics with Financial Frictions: A Survey," Levine's Working Paper Archive 786969000000000384, David K. Levine.
    19. Michael Grill & Karl Schmedders & Felix Kubler & Johannes Brumm, 2012. "Margin Requirements and Asset Prices," 2012 Meeting Papers 533, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    20. Peeters, R.J.A.P. & Wolk, K.L., 2014. "Eliciting and aggregating individual expectations: An experimental study," Research Memorandum 029, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Leverage; Asset Pricing; Experimental Economics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A10 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - General
    • C90 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - General
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gwi:wpaper:2012-1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kyle Renner (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iigwuus.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.