IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bdi/wptemi/td_1063_16.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Informational contagion in the laboratory

Author

Listed:
  • Marco Cipriani

    (Federal Reserve of New York)

  • Antonio Guarino

    (University College London)

  • Giovanni Guazzarotti

    (Bank of Italy)

  • Federico Tagliati

    (University College London)

  • Sven Fischer

    (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods)

Abstract

We study the informational channel of financial contagion under laboratory conditions. In our experiment, two markets with correlated fundamentals open sequentially and in both of them subjects receive private information. Subjects in the market opening second also observe the history of trades and prices in the first market. We find that although in both markets private information is only imperfectly aggregated, subjects are able to make correct inferences based on the public information coming from the market that opens first. We thus observe financial contagion under laboratory conditions: the correlation between asset prices is very close to that predicted by the theory. Moreover, as the theory predicts, there is no contagion when asset fundamentals are independent: in other words, subjects only react to the history of prices and trades in the first market when it is rational to do so because they convey information.

Suggested Citation

  • Marco Cipriani & Antonio Guarino & Giovanni Guazzarotti & Federico Tagliati & Sven Fischer, 2016. "Informational contagion in the laboratory," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 1063, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    • Handle: RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_1063_16
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/temi-discussione/2016/2016-1063/en_tema_1063.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mathias Drehmann & Jörg Oechssler & Andreas Roider, 2005. "Herding and Contrarian Behavior in Financial Markets: An Internet Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(5), pages 1403-1426, December.
    2. Michael Ehrmann & Marcel Fratzscher & Roberto Rigobon, 2011. "Stocks, bonds, money markets and exchange rates: measuring international financial transmission," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(6), pages 948-974, September.
    3. Marco Cipriani & Antonio Guarino, 2005. "Herd Behavior in a Laboratory Financial Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(5), pages 1427-1443, December.
    4. Franklin Allen & Douglas Gale, 2000. "Financial Contagion," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(1), pages 1-33, February.
    5. Marco Cipriani & Antonio Guarino, 2009. "Herd Behavior in Financial Markets: An Experiment with Financial Market Professionals," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(1), pages 206-233, March.
    6. Cipriani Marco & Guarino Antonio, 2008. "Herd Behavior and Contagion in Financial Markets," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 1-56, October.
    7. Barry Eichengreen & Andrew K. Rose & Charles Wyplosz, 1996. "Contagious Currency Crises," NBER Working Papers 5681, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Glosten, Lawrence R. & Milgrom, Paul R., 1985. "Bid, ask and transaction prices in a specialist market with heterogeneously informed traders," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 71-100, March.
    9. Edwards, Sebastian & Rigobon, Roberto, 2002. "Currency crises and contagion: an introduction," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 307-313, December.
    10. John Geanakoplos & Ana Fostel, 2008. "Leverage Cycles and the Anxious Economy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1211-1244, September.
    11. 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.
    12. Laura E. Kodres & Matthew Pritsker, 2002. "A Rational Expectations Model of Financial Contagion," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(2), pages 769-799, April.
    13. Grossman, Sanford, 1978. "Further results on the informational efficiency of competitive stock markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 81-101, June.
    14. Forsythe, Robert & Lundholm, Russell, 1990. "Information Aggregation in an Experimental Market," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(2), pages 309-347, March.
    15. 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.
    16. Kathy Yuan, 2005. "Asymmetric Price Movements and Borrowing Constraints: A Rational Expectations Equilibrium Model of Crises, Contagion, and Confusion," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(1), pages 379-411, February.
    17. Plott, Charles R & Sunder, Shyam, 1988. "Rational Expectations and the Aggregation of Diverse Information in Laboratory Security Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(5), pages 1085-1118, September.
    18. Copeland, Thomas E & Friedman, Daniel, 1991. "Partial Revelation of Information in Experimental Asset Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(1), pages 265-295, March.
    19. Grossman, Sanford J, 1976. "On the Efficiency of Competitive Stock Markets Where Trades Have Diverse Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 31(2), pages 573-585, May.
    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. Bayona, Anna & Peia, Oana, 2022. "Financial contagion and the wealth effect: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 1184-1202.
    2. Concetta Rondinelli & Roberta Zizza, 2020. "Spend today or spend tomorrow? The role of inflation expectations in consumer behaviour," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 1276, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    3. Debarsy, Nicolas & Dossougoin, Cyrille & Ertur, Cem & Gnabo, Jean-Yves, 2018. "Measuring sovereign risk spillovers and assessing the role of transmission channels: A spatial econometrics approach," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 21-45.
    4. König-Kersting, Christian & Trautmann, Stefan T. & Vlahu, Razvan, 2022. "Bank instability: Interbank linkages and the role of disclosure," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    5. König-Kersting, Christian & Trautmann, Stefan T. & Vlahu, Razvan, 2022. "Bank instability: Interbank linkages and the role of disclosure," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    6. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2020_014 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Chen, Bin-xia & Sun, Yan-lin, 2022. "The impact of VIX on China’s financial market: A new perspective based on high-dimensional and time-varying methods," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 63(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. Corgnet, Brice & DeSantis, Mark & Porter, David, 2021. "Information aggregation and the cognitive make-up of market participants," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    2. Jason Shachat & Anand Srinivasan, 2022. "Informational Price Cascades and Non-Aggregation of Asymmetric Information in Experimental Asset Markets," Journal of Behavioral Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(4), pages 388-407, November.
    3. Charles N. Noussair & Steven Tucker, 2013. "Experimental Research On Asset Pricing," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 554-569, July.
    4. Nuzzo, Simone & Morone, Andrea, 2017. "Asset markets in the lab: A literature review," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 13(C), pages 42-50.
    5. Boortz, Christopher & Kremer, Stephanie & Jurkatis, Simon & Nautz, Dieter, 2014. "Information risk, market stress and institutional herding in financial markets: New evidence through the lens of a simulated model," SFB 649 Discussion Papers 2014-029, Humboldt University Berlin, Collaborative Research Center 649: Economic Risk.
    6. Jakob Grazzini, 2013. "Information dissemination in an experimentally based agent-based stock market," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 8(1), pages 179-209, April.
    7. Giovanni Ferri & Andrea Morone, 2014. "The effect of rating agencies on herd behaviour," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 9(1), pages 107-127, April.
    8. Marco Cipriani & Antonio Guarino, 2014. "Estimating a Structural Model of Herd Behavior in Financial Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(1), pages 224-251, January.
    9. Martin Barner & Francesco Feri & Charles R. Plott, 2005. "On the microstructure of price determination and information aggregation with sequential and asymmetric information arrival in an experimental asset market," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 73-107, January.
    10. Eric M. Aldrich & Kristian López Vargas, 2020. "Experiments in high-frequency trading: comparing two market institutions," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 23(2), pages 322-352, June.
    11. Hirshleifer, David & Teoh, Siew Hong, 2008. "Thought and Behavior Contagion in Capital Markets," MPRA Paper 9164, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Marco Ottaviani & Peter Norman Sørensen, 2009. "Aggregation of Information and Beliefs: Asset Pricing Lessons from Prediction Markets," Discussion Papers 09-14, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    13. David Hirshleifer & Siew Hong Teoh, 2003. "Herd Behaviour and Cascading in Capital Markets: a Review and Synthesis," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 9(1), pages 25-66, March.
    14. repec:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2014-029 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Brice Corgnet & Mark DeSantis & David Porter, 2020. "Information Aggregation and the Cognitive Make-up of Traders," Working Papers 20-18, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    16. Choi, Jae Hoon & Munro, David, 2022. "Market liquidity and excess volatility: Theory and experiment," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    17. Marco Cipriani & Antonio Guarino, 2009. "Herd Behavior in Financial Markets: An Experiment with Financial Market Professionals," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(1), pages 206-233, March.
    18. Angrisani Marco & Guarino Antonio & Huck Steffen & Larson Nathan C, 2011. "No-Trade in the Laboratory," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-58, April.
    19. Lawrence Choo & Todd R. Kaplan & Ro’i Zultan, 2019. "Information aggregation in Arrow–Debreu markets: an experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 22(3), pages 625-652, September.
    20. Corgnet, Brice & DeSantis, Mark & Porter, David, 2020. "The distribution of information and the price efficiency of markets," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    21. Brice Corgnet & Cary Deck & Mark DeSantis & Kyle Hampton & Erik O. Kimbrough, 2023. "When Do Security Markets Aggregate Dispersed Information?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(6), pages 3697-3729, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    informational contagion; laboratory experiment;

    JEL classification:

    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets

    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:bdi:wptemi:td_1063_16. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bdigvit.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.