This paper provides a model of systemic panic among financial institutions with heterogeneous fragilities. Concerns about potential spillovers from each other generate strategic interaction among institutions, triggering a preemption game in which one tries to exit the market before the others...

Building on recent developments in behavioral asset pricing, we develop a model in which an increase in the dispersion of investor beliefs under short-selling constraints predicts a "bubble," or a rise in a stock's price above its fundamental value. Our model predicts that managers respond to...