IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpex/0201001.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Can Markets Learn to Avoid Bubbles?

Author

Listed:
  • Ross M. Miller

    (Miller Risk Advisors)

Abstract

One of the most striking results in experimental economics is the ease with which market bubbles form in a laboratory setting and the difficulty of preventing them. This article re-examines bubble experiments in light of the results of an earlier series of market experiments that examine how learning occurs in markets characterized by an asymmetry of information between buyers and sellers, such as found in Akerlof’s lemons model and Spence’s signaling model and extends the arguments put forth in the author’s book, Paving Wall Street: Experimental Economics and the Quest for the Perfect Market. Markets with asymmetric information are incomplete because they lack markets for specific levels of product quality. Such markets either lump all qualities together (lemons) or using external indications of quality to separate them (signaling). Similarly, the markets used in bubble experiments are incomplete in that they are lacking a complete set of forward or futures markets, depriving traders of the information supplied by the prices in those markets. Preliminary experimental results suggest that the addition of a single forward market can sometimes mitigate bubble formation and this article suggests more extensive research in this direction is warranted. Market bubbles outside of the laboratory usually are found in markets in with forward and futures markets that are either legally restricted or otherwise limited. Experimentation in markets with asymmetric information also indicates that the ability of subjects to learn how to send and receive signals can be enhanced by changing the way that market information is presented to them. We explore how this result might be used to help asset markets learn to avoid bubbles.

Suggested Citation

  • Ross M. Miller, 2002. "Can Markets Learn to Avoid Bubbles?," Experimental 0201001, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 07 Jan 2002.
  • Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpex:0201001
    Note: Type of Document - PDF/Acrobat; prepared on Windows 98SE; to print on PDF compatible; pages: 18 ; figures: None. Forthcoming in the Journal of Psychology and Financial Markets
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/exp/papers/0201/0201001.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ross M. Miller & Charles R. Plott & Vernon L. Smith, 1977. "Intertemporal Competitive Equilibrium: An Empirical Study of Speculation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 91(4), pages 599-624.
    2. Caginalp, Gunduz & Porter, David & Smith, Vernon, 2000. "Momentum and overreaction in experimental asset markets," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 187-204, January.
    3. Vernon L. Smith, 1962. "An Experimental Study of Competitive Market Behavior," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70, pages 322-322.
    4. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1997. "The Limits of Arbitrage," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 35-55, March.
    5. Garber, Peter M, 1990. "Famous First Bubbles," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 35-54, Spring.
    6. Michael Rothschild & Joseph Stiglitz, 1976. "Equilibrium in Competitive Insurance Markets: An Essay on the Economics of Imperfect Information," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 90(4), pages 629-649.
    7. Miller, Ross M & Plott, Charles R, 1985. "Product Quality Signaling in Experimental Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(4), pages 837-872, July.
    8. Lucas, Robert Jr., 1972. "Expectations and the neutrality of money," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 103-124, April.
    9. Wilson, Charles, 1977. "A model of insurance markets with incomplete information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 167-207, December.
    10. Porter, David P & Smith, Vernon L, 1995. "Futures Contracting and Dividend Uncertainty in Experimental Asset Markets," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 68(4), pages 509-541, October.
    11. Forsythe, Robert & Palfrey, Thomas R & Plott, Charles R, 1982. "Asset Valuation in an Experimental Market," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(3), pages 537-567, May.
    12. George A. Akerlof, 1970. "The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500.
    13. Tversky, Amos & Kahneman, Daniel, 1986. "Rational Choice and the Framing of Decisions," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(4), pages 251-278, October.
    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. Kocher, Martin G. & Lucks, Konstantin E. & Schindler, David, 2016. "Unleashing Animal Spirits - Self-Control and Overpricing in Experimental Asset Markets," Discussion Papers in Economics 27572, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    2. Miller, Ross M., 2008. "Don't let your robots grow up to be traders: Artificial intelligence, human intelligence, and asset-market bubbles," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 153-166, October.
    3. Robert C. Merton & Zvi Bodie, 2005. "Design Of Financial Systems: Towards A Synthesis Of Function And Structure," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: H Gifford Fong (ed.), The World Of Risk Management, chapter 1, pages 1-27, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    4. Stefanescu, Razvan & Dumitriu, Ramona, 2016. "Particularitǎţi ale evoluţiei variabilelor financiare [Some particularities of the financial variables evolution]," MPRA Paper 73481, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 02 Sep 2016.
    5. Hubert J. Kiss & Laszlo A. Koczy & Agnes Pinter & Balazs R. Sziklai, 2019. "Does risk sorting explain bubbles?," CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS 1905, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.
    6. Martin G Kocher & Konstantin E Lucks & David Schindler, 2019. "Unleashing Animal Spirits: Self-Control and Overpricing in Experimental Asset Markets," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(6), pages 2149-2178.
    7. Kiss, Hubert J. & Kóczy, László Á. & Pintér, Ágnes & Sziklai, Balázs R., 2022. "Does risk sorting explain overpricing in experimental asset markets?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 99(C).

    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. Miller, Ross M., 2008. "Don't let your robots grow up to be traders: Artificial intelligence, human intelligence, and asset-market bubbles," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 153-166, October.
    2. Giuseppe Pernagallo & Benedetto Torrisi, 2020. "A theory of information overload applied to perfectly efficient financial markets," Review of Behavioral Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 14(2), pages 223-236, October.
    3. Garcia, René, 1986. "La théorie économique de l’information : exposé synthétique de la littérature," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 62(1), pages 88-109, mars.
    4. Ortmann, Andreas, 2003. "Charles R. Plott's collected papers on the experimental foundations of economic and political science," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 555-575, August.
    5. Andrea Attar & Thomas Mariotti & François Salanié, 2020. "The Social Costs of Side Trading," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 130(630), pages 1608-1622.
    6. Dionne, G. & Doherty, N., 1991. "Adverse Selection In Insurance Markets: A Selective Survey," Cahiers de recherche 9105, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    7. 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.
    8. De Feo, Giuseppe & Hindriks, Jean, 2014. "Harmful competition in insurance markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 213-226.
    9. Lucy F. Ackert & Narat Charupat & Bryan K. Church & Richard Deaves, 2006. "Margin, Short Selling, and Lotteries in Experimental Asset Markets," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 73(2), pages 419-436, October.
    10. Sebastian Panthöfer, 2016. "Risk Selection under Public Health Insurance with Opt‐Out," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(9), pages 1163-1181, September.
    11. Sudipto Bhattacharya & Kjell G. Nyborg, 2013. "Bank Bailout Menus," Review of Corporate Finance Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 2(1), pages 29-61.
    12. Daniel McFadden & Carlos Noton & Pau Olivella, "undated". "Remedies for Sick Insurance," Working Papers 620, Barcelona School of Economics.
    13. Greenwald, Bruce C. & Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1987. "Imperfect information, credit markets and unemployment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-2), pages 444-456.
    14. Zabinski, Daniel & Selden, Thomas M. & Moeller, John F. & Banthin, Jessica S., 1999. "Medical savings accounts: microsimulation results from a model with adverse selection," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 195-218, April.
    15. Keane, Michael, 2004. "Modeling Health Insurance Choices in “Competitive” Markets," MPRA Paper 55198, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Fabrice Etilé & Sabrina Teyssier, 2012. "Signaling Corporate Social Responsibility: Third-Party Certification vs. Brands," PSE Working Papers halshs-00736551, HAL.
    17. Seyed Mohammadreza Davoodalhosseini, 2020. "Adverse Selection With Heterogeneously Informed Agents," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 61(3), pages 1307-1358, August.
    18. Hanming Fang & Michael P. Keane & Dan Silverman, 2008. "Sources of Advantageous Selection: Evidence from the Medigap Insurance Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(2), pages 303-350, April.
    19. Bedard, Nicholas C., 2017. "The strategically ignorant principal," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 548-561.
    20. Raj Chetty & Amy Finkelstein, 2012. "Social Insurance: Connecting Theory to Data," NBER Working Papers 18433, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Market bubbles; learning and adaptation; behavioral finance; signaling; asymmetric information;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C90 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - General
    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:wpa:wuwpex:0201001. 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: EconWPA (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de .

    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.