Heterogeneity, Market Mechanisms, and Asset Price Dynamics

Carl Chiarella*, Roberto Dieci, Xue Zhong He

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book or Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

172 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Although there might be agreement that the standard paradigm does not fully explain what is causing the evolution of speculative asset prices, there may be less agreement on where to start to build an improved paradigm. By and large, the view that has been adopted in the boundedly rational heterogeneous agent literature is to retain expected utility maximization as the goal of each agent but to allow the agents to have different risk preferences and different expectations, rather than the single homogeneous rational expectation, about future possible returns. The expectations differ since agents are assumed to have different information and beliefs. Thus the asset price modeling framework is based on the fact that trading is driven more by differences in expectations than by the random arrival of news events. Within this framework, a simple market of one risky asset and one risk-free asset, with agents having different expectations, is considered with two different types of utility functions and two different market-clearing mechanisms. The framework provides the basic elements and structure of the various models. The basic building blocks of this framework are portfolio optimization, agents' utility functions, the market-clearing mechanism, and expectations feedback.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationHandbook of Financial Markets
Subtitle of host publicationDynamics and Evolution
PublisherElsevier Inc.
Pages277-344
Number of pages68
ISBN (Print)9780123742582
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2009
Externally publishedYes

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