Learning in asymmetric duopoly markets: competition in information and market correlation

This paper explores experimentation and learning in asymmetric duopoly markets with product differentiation and demand uncertainty. We define the concepts of strategic substitutability and strategic complementarity in information and we show how both the mode of information competition and the transmission of information across markets affect duopoly experimentation. We relate information competition with market competition and we find that, when goods are substitutes and the correlation between market shocks is negative, firms will have a higher incentive to experiment in asymmetric markets than in symmetric ones. The opposite result follows when such correlation is positive. Also, when goods are complements the above findings are reversed.JEL Classification: D83, C72The authors thank partial financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology under project B2000-1429, from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science under project SEJ2004-07554 and from the “Generalitat Valénciana” under project GRUPOS04/13.     

R&D financing and growth

ABSTRACT

R&D investment are an important engine of growth and development. Yet economists have often claimed underinvestment, based on the consideration that these projects are more costly to finance, especially, due to the asymmetric information between inside and outside investors. Coherently, a recent empirical evidence has shown that firms intensively active in R&D are less leveraged and rely more heavily on internal finance. Motivated by this evidence, we study the effects of asymmetric information and financial frictions within a GE economy of Schumpeterian tradition. The model and equilibrium concept are rich enough to represent investment and innovation decisions, technology adoption/diffusion through patent licensing and, most importantly, firms' financial decisions. In this representation, R&D-intensive firms might effectively rely more on internal sources and equity than on debt financing, relative to what would happen in frictionless markets. Further, financial decisions affect aggregate investment and income dynamics.     

Economics in Institutional Perspective,Memorial Essays in Honor of K. William Kapp

In the past, the standard discussions of market failures in economics textbooks confined themselves to issues involving externalities, public goods, and common property (open access). Subsequent to George Akerlof’s famous article “The Market for ‘Lemons,’” discussions of the problems created by asymmetric information gradually became standard fare, but the issues raised by thinking of asymmetric information in economic matters extend far beyond the used car and health insurance markets that are normally used as the paradigm cases. In fact, consideration of the problems of information will inevitably lead to an examination of the problems of market manipulation and fraud, especially in light of the 2008 financial crisis. Akerlof has travelled this path himself as indicated by his recent book with Robert Shiller, Phishing for Phools (2015). Akerlof and Shiller provide a litany of examples of manipulation and deception in advertising and in many markets including financial markets. They also have a chapter on “The Resistance and its Heroes” that highlights some of the people and agencies that have worked to expose and reduce phishing, but this chapter is remarkably sparse. What this article attempts to do is to fill out some of this history by focusing on the work of American institutional economists from Veblen to Galbraith, who critically examined the issues of manipulation and deception in advertising, salesmanship, and finance. Some general considerations relating to the problem of fraud are also discussed.     

The Relationship between Interest Rates and Inflation: Examining the Fisher Effect in China

This study revisits the Fisher effect using a different empirical method that considers a potential nonlinear relationship between interest rates (treasury bond rates) and inflation in China. The rising uncertainty and asymmetric information in financial markets between bond holders and bond issuers suggest such a potential nonlinear relationship. To this aim, we apply Shin et al.’s (2014) nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model with asymmetric dynamic multipliers for the sample period 2002M7–2018M4. The empirical findings reveal symmetric and asymmetric partial Fisher effects for all sample bond rates in China. Furthermore, we find that 20-year bond rates experience the lowest partial Fisher effect.     

Anatomy of a financial crisis

This paper provides an asymmetric information framework for understanding the nature of financial crises. It provides the following precise definition of a financial crisis: A financial crisis is a disruption to financial markets in which adverse selection and moral hazard problems become much worse, so that financial markets are unable to efficiently channel funds to those who have the most productive investment opportunities. As a result, a financial crisis can drive the economy away from an equilibrium with high output in which financial markets perform well to one in which output declines sharply. The asymmetric information framework explains the patterns in the data and many features of these crises which are otherwise hard to explain. It indicates that financial crises have effects over and above those resulting from bank panics and therefore provides a rationale for an expanded lender-of-last-resort role for the central bank in which the central bank uses the discount window to provide liquidity to sectors outside of the banking system.     

No-arbitrage, state prices and trade in thin financial markets

We examine how non-competitiveness in financial markets affects the choice of asset portfolios and the determination of equilibrium prices. In our model, potential arbitrage is conducted by a few highly specialized institutional investors who recognize and estimate the impact of their trades on financial prices. We apply a model of economic equilibrium, based on Weretka (, 2007a), in which price effects are determined endogenously as part of the equilibrium concept. For the case in which markets allow for perfect insurance, we argue that the principle of no-arbitrage asset pricing is consistent with non-competitive behavior of the arbitragers and extend the fundamental theorem of asset pricing to the non-competitive setting.     

Collateral restrictions and liquidity under-supply: a simple model

We show that very little is needed to create liquidity under-supply in equilibrium. Credit constraints on demand by themselves can cause an under-supply of liquidity, without the uncertainty, intermediation, asymmetric information or complicated international financial framework used in other models in the literature. We show that the under-supply is a non-monotone function of the demand distortion that causes it, a result that may have interesting implications for emerging markets economies. Finally, when we make the credit constraint endogenous, the inefficiency can be large due to the presence of a multiplier. The authors thank the very helpful comments of Andres Velasco, Herbert Scarf and all the participants of the Mathematical Economics Seminar at Yale.     

不对称雇主学习、外部选择与雇员谈判力

本文在非合作博弈（策略式）单边不对称信息讨价还价框架下,按照外部约束（而不是威胁点）的思路来模型化外部雇主的竞争,以分析不对称雇主学习的程度对处于信息劣势的通用性雇员谈判力的决定作用。本文提出的框架弥补了已有文献的一些不足,同时为不对称雇主学习这一劳动经济学概念提供了一个讨价还价理论基础。     

Real assets, financial assets, liquidity and the lemon problem

Return obtained by diversification is based on average quality. Similarly, under asymmetric information, the price at which an asset can be sold reflects the average quality of assets. Therefore, 4under some conditions, sale of an asset under asymmetric information is a useful alternative to diversification. This idea is developed with a model that incorporates a liquidity shock. One key result is that investment in real assets is higher under asymmetric information than under symmetric information. The model can explain why the ratio of real assets to financial assets is higher in emerging economies than in developed countries.     

Financial Globalization,Social Exclusion and Financial Crisis

This paper suggests one set of mechanisms that ties financial globalization processes to local dynamics of financial inclusion or exclusion. Specifically, this paper explores the worldwide reconsideration of financial firms’ strategies that has accompanied financial globalization. It is shown that the neoliberal and asymmetric‐information approaches to credit markets and financial crises in developing economies overlook these dimensions of financial globalization because of their tendency to focus on representative credit markets. Banks’ strategic shift has led to the global homogenization and stratification of financial practices—and this in turn has been a key driver of processes of financial exclusion. Financial exclusion then involves bifurcation within financial markets, so that different markets serve different portions of the household and business population. This analysis suggests a reconstruction of Minsky’s microfoundational model of the origins of financial fragility and crisis, which shifts from Minsky’s emphasis on a representative borrower–lender relationship to a situation of borrower–lender relationships in bifurcated markets.     

Elimination of arbitrage states in asymmetric information models

In a financial economy with asymmetric information and incomplete markets, we study how agents, having no model of how equilibrium prices are determined, may still refine their information by eliminating sequentially “arbitrage state(s)”, namely, the state(s) which would grant the agent an arbitrage, if realizable.      

Did Baltic stock markets offer diversification benefits during the recent financial turmoil? Novel evidence from a nonparametric causality-in-quantiles test

Motivated by financial liberalization investors seek for new investment opportunities through international portfolio diversification. To this end we explore any asymmetric causal relationship between developed European stock markets (Germany, France and UK) and emerging Baltic markets namely; Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Our analysis focuses on the period before and after countries’ EU accession and pre- and post the global financial crisis. For this purpose, both the standard parametric test for causality and a novel nonparametric test for causality-in-quantiles are employed. The results of both the parametric and nonparametric Granger causality test support a causal relationship in mean that runs from all of the major markets to the Baltic markets across both samples. The results imply the existence of significant nonlinear return and volatility spillover from European markets to Baltic markets. Policy implications for international investors are also discussed.     

国际投资组合选择理论研究进展

国际投资组合选择理论研究的是在一定的假设条件下,当经济实现均衡时,投资者所应持有的本国与外国金融资产的比例。它的发展有5个特征:从追求金融市场的局部均衡到追求经济的一般均衡;从不考虑投资者的存在到考虑投资者个人效用的最大化;从单纯的理论模型构建到结合现实数据进行实证检验;从假设金融市场完全到考虑金融市场不完全的情况;从假设金融市场一体化到考虑金融市场存在分割的情况。     

Equilibrium asset pricing with systemic risk

We provide an equilibrium multi-asset pricing model with micro- founded systemic risk and heterogeneous investors. Systemic risk arises due to excessive leverage and risk taking induced by free-riding externalities. Global risk-sensitive financial regulations are introduced with a view of tackling systemic risk, with Value-at-Risk a key component. The model suggests that risk-sensitive regulation can lower systemic risk in equilibrium, at the expense of poor risk-sharing, an increase in risk premia, higher and asymmetric asset volatility, lower liquidity, more comovement in prices, and the chance that markets may not clear. We thank Michel Habib, José Scheinkman, Hyun Shin and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments. Jean-Pierre Zigrand is a lecturer in Finance at the LSE, and is the corresponding author. The authors would like to acknowledge financial support under the EPSRC Grant GR/S83975/01 at the Financial Markets Group, London School of Economics.     

Temporary financial equilibrium

Summary. In a two-period pure exchange economy with financial assets, a temporary financial equilibrium is an equilibrium of the current spot and security markets given forecast functions of future prices and payoffs. The temporary equilibrium model can then be interpreted as an Arrow-Debreu economy where preferences depend on prices. This identification implies, among other consequences, the existence and the generic determinateness of the financial temporary equilibria associated with given forecast functions. Received: December 29, 1999; revised version: December 20, 2001     

Production and financial policies under asymmetric information

We propose an extension of the standard general equilibrium model with production and incomplete markets to situations in which (i) private investors have limited information on the returns of specific assets, (ii) managers of firms have limited information on the preferences of individual shareholders. The extension is obtained by the assumption that firms are not traded directly but grouped into ‘sectorial’ funds. In our model the financial policy of the firm is not irrelevant. We establish the existence of equilibria and discuss the nature of the inefficiencies introduced by the presence of asymmetric information. We also illustrate the properties of the model in three simple examples. We would like to thank Alberto Bisin, Armando Dominioni, Piero Gottardi, Tito Pietra, Paolo Siconolfi, and an anonymous referee for useful suggestions and comments.     

主权信用评级对证券市场的影响研究述评

国际证券市场的持续动荡,使得主权信用评级的影响作用越加突现。诸多研究指出,主权信用评级调整对股票市场和债券市场都存在影响,但由于市场对信息的敏感程度不同,股票市场比债券市场的反应剧烈,而且股票市场对主权信用评级调整能作出提前响应。由于市场预期和经济周期的合力作用,市场存在着对正负评级变化的不对称反应。因此,对现有文献进行梳理和评议,一方面增进了人们对这一问题的认识和理解,另一方面也为制定风险防范政策提供了一定的参考依据。     

Don’t let your robots grow up to be traders: Artificial intelligence, human intelligence, and asset-market bubbles

Researchers who have examined markets populated by “robot traders” have claimed that the high level of allocative efficiency observed in experimental markets is driven largely by the “intelligence” implicit in the rules of the market. Furthermore, they view the ability of agents (artificial or human) to process information and make rational decisions as unnecessary for the efficient operation of markets. This paper presents a new series of market experiments that show that markets populated with standard robot traders are no longer efficient if time is a meaningful element, as it is in all asset markets. While simple two-season markets with human subjects reliably converge to an efficient equilibrium, markets with minimally intelligent robot traders fail to attain this equilibrium. Instead, these markets overshoot the equilibrium and then crash below it. In addition to firmly establishing the role of trader intelligence in asset-market equilibrium, these experiments also provide insights into why bubbles and crashes are consistently observed in many asset-market laboratory experiments using human subjects.     

German business cycle forecasts, asymmetric loss and financial variables

We examine the efficiency of German forecasts for output growth and inflation allowing for an asymmetric loss function of the forecasters. We find the loss of output growth forecasts to be approximately symmetric while there is an asymmetry in the loss of the inflation forecasts. The information of financial variables seems to be adequately incorporated into the output forecasts but to a lesser extent into the inflation forecasts.     

Explaining the nonlinear effects of financial development on economic growth

Using different indicators of financial development, recent empirical studies have discovered various patterns of nonlinearity in the relationship between financial development and economic growth. By adding consumption loans, which are nonproductive, into a standard model of asymmetric information, this paper generates a model that is able to replicate all possible nonlinear finance–growth relationships found in recent empirical studies.