IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/inn/wpaper/2011-08.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Thar she bursts - Reducing confusion reduces bubbles

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Kirchler
  • Jürgen Huber
  • Thomas Stöckl

Abstract

To explore why bubbles frequently emerge in the experimental asset market model of Smith, Suchanek and Williams (1988), we vary the fundamental value process (constant or declining) and the cash-to-asset value-ratio (constant or increasing). We observe high mispricing in treatments with a declining fundamental value, while overvaluation emerges when coupled with an increasing C/A-ratio. A questionnaire reveals that the declining fundamental value process confuses subjects, as they expect the fundamental value to stay constant.Running the experiment with a different context ("stocks of a depletable gold mine" instead of "stocks") significantly reduces mispricing and overvaluation as it reduces confusion.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Kirchler & Jürgen Huber & Thomas Stöckl, 2011. "Thar she bursts - Reducing confusion reduces bubbles," Working Papers 2011-08, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    • Handle: RePEc:inn:wpaper:2011-08
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www2.uibk.ac.at/downloads/c4041030/wpaper/2011-08.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Vivian Lei & Filip Vesely, 2009. "Market Efficiency: Evidence From A No-Bubble Asset Market Experiment," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(2), pages 246-258, May.
    2. Dilip Abreu & Markus K. Brunnermeier, 2003. "Bubbles and Crashes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(1), pages 173-204, January.
    3. Lei, Vivian & Noussair, Charles N & Plott, Charles R, 2001. "Nonspeculative Bubbles in Experimental Asset Markets: Lack of Common Knowledge of Rationality vs. Actual Irrationality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(4), pages 831-859, July.
    4. Martin Dufwenberg & Tobias Lindqvist & Evan Moore, 2005. "Bubbles and Experience: An Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(5), pages 1731-1737, December.
    5. Nouriel Roubini, 2006. "Why Central Banks Should Burst Bubbles," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(1), pages 87-107, May.
    6. Adam S. Posen, 2006. "Why Central Banks Should Not Burst Bubbles," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(1), pages 109-124, May.
    7. Noussair, C. & Robin, S. & Ruffieux, B., 1998. "Bubbles and Anti-Crashes in Laboratory Asset Markets with Constant Fundamental Values," Purdue University Economics Working Papers 1119, Purdue University, Department of Economics.
    8. 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.
    9. Mark van Boening & Vernon L. Smith & Charissa P. Wellford, 2000. "Dividend timing and behavior in laboratory asset markets," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 16(3), pages 567-583.
    10. Charles A. Holt & Susan K. Laury, 2002. "Risk Aversion and Incentive Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1644-1655, December.
    11. Ernan Haruvy & Charles N. Noussair, 2006. "The Effect of Short Selling on Bubbles and Crashes in Experimental Spot Asset Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(3), pages 1119-1157, June.
    12. Ernan Haruvy & Yaron Lahav & Charles N. Noussair, 2007. "Traders' Expectations in Asset Markets: Experimental Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 1901-1920, December.
    13. Oechssler, Jörg, 2010. "Searching beyond the lamppost: Let's focus on economically relevant questions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 65-67, January.
    14. Smith, Vernon L & Suchanek, Gerry L & Williams, Arlington W, 1988. "Bubbles, Crashes, and Endogenous Expectations in Experimental Spot Asset Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(5), pages 1119-1151, September.
    15. 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.
    16. Smith, Vernon L., 2010. "Theory and experiment: What are the questions?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 3-15, January.
    17. Thomas Stöckl & Jürgen Huber & Michael Kirchler, 2010. "Bubble measures in experimental asset markets," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 13(3), pages 284-298, September.
    18. Charles Noussair & Steven Tucker, 2006. "Futures Markets And Bubble Formation In Experimental Asset Markets," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(2), pages 167-184, June.
    19. Charles Noussair & Stephane Robin & Bernard Ruffieux, 2001. "Price Bubbles in Laboratory Asset Markets with Constant Fundamental Values," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 4(1), pages 87-105, June.
    20. Greiner, Ben, 2004. "An Online Recruitment System for Economic Experiments," MPRA Paper 13513, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    21. Fama, Eugene F, 1970. "Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 25(2), pages 383-417, May.
    22. 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.
    23. Eileen Chou & Margaret McConnell & Rosemarie Nagel & Charles Plott, 2009. "The control of game form recognition in experiments: understanding dominant strategy failures in a simple two person “guessing” game," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 12(2), pages 159-179, June.
    24. Van Boening, Mark V. & Williams, Arlington W. & LaMaster, Shawn, 1993. "Price bubbles and crashes in experimental call markets," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 179-185.
    25. Reshmaan N. Hussam & David Porter & Vernon L. Smith, 2008. "Thar She Blows: Can Bubbles Be Rekindled with Experienced Subjects?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 924-937, June.
    26. Oechssler, Jörg & Schmidt, Carsten & Schnedler, Wendelin, 2011. "On the ingredients for bubble formation: Informed traders and communication," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 35(11), pages 1831-1851.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Cheung, Stephen L. & Hedegaard, Morten & Palan, Stefan, 2014. "To see is to believe: Common expectations in experimental asset markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 84-96.
    2. Fischbacher, Urs & Hens, Thorsten & Zeisberger, Stefan, 2013. "The impact of monetary policy on stock market bubbles and trading behavior: Evidence from the lab," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(10), pages 2104-2122.
    3. Giovanni Giusti & Janet Hua Jiang & Yiping Xu, 2014. "Interest on Cash, Fundamental Value Process and Bubble Formation on Experimental Asset Markets," Staff Working Papers 14-18, Bank of Canada.
    4. Bousselmi, Wael & Sentis, Patrick & Willinger, Marc, 2019. "How do markets react to (un)expected fundamental value shocks? An experimental analysis," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 90-113.
    5. Lugovskyy, Volodymyr & Puzzello, Daniela & Tucker, Steven & Williams, Arlington, 2014. "Asset-holdings caps and bubbles in experimental asset markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 107(PB), pages 781-797.
    6. Baghestanian, Sascha & Walker, Todd B., 2015. "Anchoring in experimental asset markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 15-25.
    7. Stephen Cheung & Stefan Palan, 2012. "Two heads are less bubbly than one: team decision-making in an experimental asset market," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(3), pages 373-397, September.
    8. Baghestanian, S. & Lugovskyy, V. & Puzzello, D., 2015. "Traders’ heterogeneity and bubble-crash patterns in experimental asset markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 82-101.
    9. Thomas Stöckl & Jürgen Huber & Michael Kirchler, 2015. "Multi-period experimental asset markets with distinct fundamental value regimes," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(2), pages 314-334, June.
    10. Owen Powell & Natalia Shestakova, 2017. "Experimental asset markets: behavior and bubbles," Chapters, in: Morris Altman (ed.), Handbook of Behavioural Economics and Smart Decision-Making, chapter 21, pages 375-391, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    11. Stéphane Robin & Kateřina Strážnická & Marie Claire Villeval, 2021. "Bubbles and incentives: an experiment on asset markets," Economic and Political Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(1), pages 68-89, January.
    12. Razen, Michael & Huber, Jürgen & Kirchler, Michael, 2017. "Cash inflow and trading horizon in asset markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 359-384.
    13. Zhengyang Bao & Andreas Leibbrandt & ple391, 2019. "Thar she resurges: The case of assets that lack positive fundamental value," Monash Economics Working Papers 12-19, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    14. Giusti, Giovanni & Jiang, Janet Hua & Xu, Yiping, 2012. "Eliminating Laboratory Asset Bubbles by Paying Interest on Cash," MPRA Paper 37321, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Michael Razen & Jürgen Huber & Michael Kirchler, 2016. "Cash Inflow and Trading Horizon in Asset Markets," Working Papers 2016-06, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    16. Volodymyr Lugovskyy & Daniela Puzzello & Steven Tucker, 2009. "An Experimental Study of Bubble Formation in Asset Markets Using the Tâtonnement Pricing Mechanism," Working Papers in Economics 09/19, University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance.
    17. Matthias Sutter & Jürgen Huber & Michael Kirchler, 2012. "Bubbles and Information: An Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(2), pages 384-393, February.
    18. Ciril Bosch-Rosa & Thomas Meissner & Antoni Bosch-Domènech, 2018. "Cognitive bubbles," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 21(1), pages 132-153, March.
    19. Taylor Jaworski & Erik O. Kimbrough, 2016. "Bubbles, Crashes, And Endogenous Uncertainty In Linked Asset And Product Markets," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 57(1), pages 155-176, February.
    20. Jürgen Huber & Michael Kirchler, 2012. "The impact of instructions and procedure on reducing confusion and bubbles in experimental asset markets," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(1), pages 89-105, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Experimental economics; asset market; bubble; market efficiency; confusion;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles

    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:inn:wpaper:2011-08. 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: Janette Walde (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fuibkat.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.