Efficient markets and Bayes’ rule

Summary. A series of financial anomalies motivated the development of new theories that modify the rational expectations ideal. Two possibilities have been systematically explored. The literature on behavioral finance relaxes the assumption that agents form beliefs according to the laws of probability and assume, instead, that simpler heuristic rules are used. Another stream of the literature assumes that agents process information according to Bayes rule, but do not posses sufficient information to know the true data generating process. In this paper, Bayesian and Behavioral agents coexist and trade in a standard dynamic asset pricing model. A long-standing conjecture is demonstrated. It is shown that, under suitable assumptions, Bayesian agents drive Behavioral, non-Bayesian agents out of the market. Hence, asset prices are eventually determined under the Bayesian paradigm.Received: 3 June 2004, Revised: 17 September 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: D83.Preliminary versions have circulated under the titles Markets Favor Bayesian Models and Market Selection of Empirical Models under Limited Information. I thank Larry Blume, David Easley, Larry Epstein, Armando Gomes, Bruce Hansen, Lars Hansen, Richard Kihlstrom, Grace Koo, George Mailath, Werner Ploberger, Andrew Postlewaite and Shakeeb Khan for useful comments. I also thank participants at the NBER GE meetings, Evolutionary Finance conference in Zurich, Latin American Meetings of the Econometric Society, Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics, the Instituto de Matematica Pura e Aplicada, the theory seminar at Brown, Chicago, Harvard-MIT, Minnesota, Penn and Wisconsin. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the National Science Foundation Grant SES 0109650.     

Bargaining Outcomes with Double-Offer Arbitration

Increasingly, arbitration is becoming used to resolve bargaining disputes in a variety of settings. Reducing dispute rates is often listed as a main goal in designing arbitration mechanisms. Conventional arbitration and final-offer arbitration are two commonly used procedures, but theoretical examinations of these arbitration procedures show that disputants’ final bargaining positions do not converge and disagreement is likely. This article contains results from a set of experiments designed to compare bargaining outcomes under the two commonly used arbitration procedures with outcomes under an innovative procedure called “double-offer” arbitration (Zeng et al., 1996). This procedure requires that disputants make two final offers at impasse: a primary and a secondary offer. The arbitrator evaluates the pairs of offers using a linear criterion function, and theory suggests the secondary offers converge to the median of the arbitrator’s preferred settlement distribution. Because the procedure’s rules are that convergence of offers generates a settlement at those offers, this theoretical convergence result implies that arbitration is not needed in the end. Experimental results indicate that dispute rates in double-offer arbitration are, on average, about the same as dispute rates in conventional arbitration. However, other results show reason to favor double-offer arbitration. Specifically, in repeated bargaining, there is concern over whether use of an arbitration procedure becomes addictive and makes bargainers more likely to use the procedure in the future-a “narcotic effect.” The data show that double-offer arbitration is non-addictive, whereas both conventional and final-offer arbitration are.     

Dimensions of quality upgrading

The impact of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies’ trade integration with European markets on CEE trade structures has been studied extensively. These studies frequently observe a quality upgrading of CEE exports. In this paper we consider three dimensions of quality upgrading: upgrading across industries, upgrading across different quality segments within industries and, finally, product upgrading within quality segments inside industries. For the analysis we partition industries into quality segments based on EU‐15 import unit values. The results for ten CEE countries (comprising the CEE‐5, the Baltics and South East Europe) and thirteen industries suggest fundamental differences, both across country groups and across the three different notions of quality upgrading. The CEE‐5 show no evidence of entering a ‘low‐quality trap’ in all three dimensions. By contrast, while there is a general catching‐up process across industries and inside quality segments, the second notion of low‐quality specialization may be applicable within the high‐tech industries to the performance for the Baltics and South East Europe as a group.     

Central Bank's interventions and the Fisher hypothesis: a threshold cointegration investigation

The long-run relationship between nominal interest rates and inflation is examined, allowing for structural breaks and asymmetric mean reversion. From a Threshold AutoRegressive (TAR) test applied to the residuals of the cointegration relationship (while allowing for both a break in the mean of the long-run equation and a smooth regime-transition), there is strong evidence for non-linear mean reversion properties for the real interest rates of the US Treasury Bill market. This suggests asymmetric changes to inflation shocks in the Central Bank's reaction function. The existence of different regimes is consistent with some interpretations of the monetary policies run by the Fed, such as credibility and opportunism.     

我国资本市场分形特性研究

任何科学发展,包括社会科学在内,其前沿问题都是非线性问题.但是,由于现行线性模型的简单易行,实际中仍被广泛运用.随着经济行为越来越复杂,只有用动态的非线性模型刻画某些经济现象,才能较好地反映客观现实.近二十年来,作为研究非线性问题科学分支之一的分形理论,也就成了经济学科研究与应用的前沿领域.本文探讨了分形时间序列的基本特点及Hurst指数计算方法,描述了计算时间序列Hurst指数的一般方法,运用R/S分析法分析了我国资本市场的分形特性,通过实例分析,总结了资本市场分形理论的基本内容.     

区域科技计划中的中央与地方科技资源整合

分析了我国中央属科技资源在区域创新系统中所具有的优势地位,以及影响中央与地方科技资源整合效率的主要原因,探讨了以区域科技计划整合中央与地方科技资源的可行性,并从制定程序和加强项目管理两个方面,提出了利用区域科技计划整合中央与地方科技资源的具体措施。     

Endogenous structural change and crisis in a multiple time-scales growth model

The slow and endogenous twist of economic macro-structure makes up an important evolutionary feature of capitalist economies, and may be at the root of structural crisis. In this line, a Goodwinian growth model with increasing returns and profit-sharing that tries to picture a simple scenario of the seventies crisis is considered. It is shown that the exhaustion of the Kaldor-Verdoorn “productivity law” can entail, in a nonlinear framework, a “catastrophic” bifurcation from a “high” to a “low” growth path. Slow/fast dynamical systems then allow one to formalize a multiple time-scales dynamics where the growth path is shaped by the structural framework in which it takes place, but has also a long -un feedback. Structural change and crisis appear as long term and endogenous outcomes.     

中国国内生产总值与教育之间关系的实证分析

本文从柯布-道格拉斯生产函数入手,将劳动力按受教育程度划分为四类分别进行处理。主要就中国国内生产总值(GDP)与各等教育程度劳动力和投资之间关系进行单整和协整检验,并建立误差修正模型(ECM),然后在协整条件下对各等教育程度劳动力与GDP的长、短期关系进行分析。文章的实证结果将为我国有关部门的政策决策提供有力依据。     

面向电子商务的现代物流管理信息系统的开发

结合现代物流技术发展趋势，分析探讨了面向电子商务的现代物流管理信息系统的开发技术路线，关键技术内容，功能体系结构设计及分层逻辑模型设计。     

我国建筑业全生命周期价值链的应用研究

长期以来,我国建筑业缺乏对全生命周期价值链管理的整体关注,价值链中各个环节相互脱节,没有共同的价值目标,导致了成本较高的现状。本文旨在通过对建筑业全生命周期价值链的分析,拓展我国建筑业成本管理的关注面。并通过工程总承包模式对现有价值链进行优化,把勘察、设计、施工归集在同一个主体下管理,提高用户对建筑产品的满意度,降低产品成本。