Market Sentiment: A Tragedy of the Commons
6 Pages Posted: 19 Dec 2010 Last revised: 29 Jul 2011
Date Written: January 17, 2011
Abstract
We present a model with dispersed information in which investors decide whether or to what degree they want to allow their behavior to be influenced by "market sentiment". Investors who choose to insulate their decision from market sentiment earn higher expected returns, but incur a small mental cost. We show that if information is moderately dispersed across investors, even a very small mental cost (on the order of 0.001% of consumption) may generate a significant amount of sentiment in equilibrium: Individuals who choose to be swayed by sentiment increase uncertainty about the future and make it less costly for others to be swayed by sentiment as well. Market sentiment thus emerges as a tragedy of the commons.
Keywords: Noisy Rational Expectations, Sentiment, Dispersed Information
JEL Classification: D8, G11, G14
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
The Social Cost of Near-Rational Investment
By Tarek A. Hassan and Thomas M. Mertens
-
The Social Cost of Near-Rational Investment
By Tarek A. Hassan and Thomas M. Mertens
-
The Social Cost of Near-Rational Investment
By Tarek A. Hassan and Thomas M. Mertens
-
Volatile Stock Markets: Equilibrium Computation and Policy Analysis
-
Boom-Bust Cycles: Leveraging, Complex Securities, and Asset Prices
By Lucas Bernard and Willi Semmler
-
Investor Attention and Stock Market Volatility
By Daniel Andrei and Michael Hasler