Professional experts offer advice with the objective of appearing well informed. Their ability is evaluated on the basis of the advice given and the realized state of the world. We model this situation as a reputational cheap-talk game with continuous signal, state, and ability type spaces....

We offer a model in which sequences of individuals often converge upon poor decisions and are prone to fads, despite being able to communicate both past payoff outcomes and the private signals underlying past choices. This reflects direct and indirect action-based informational externalities;...

Recently, the theory of informational cascades has been tested in an experiment by Anderson and Holt (1997) who report that their data support the theory amazingly well. In this note we report on an experiment designed to find out whether observed cascades are indeed due to rational Bayesian...

The recent literature on informational cascades has nurtured the impression that cascades can occur only if the action space is coarser than the signal space. In particular, it is sometimes claimed that with continuous action spaces cascades are impossible. In this note we present a simple...

This paper examines the validity of the efficient market hypothesis (EMH) for the foreign exchange market of Papua New Guinea (PNG) using data on spot exchange rates for four major foreign currencies during the recent float. The unit root test results indicate that all the four exchange rates...

This study tests weak and semi-strong form efficiency of the foreign exchange market in Sri Lanka using six bilateral foreign exchange rates during the recent float. Weak-form efficiency is examined using unit root tests while semi-strong form efficiency is tested using co- integration and...

A growing literature argues that the Information Technology rev- olution caused the stock market crash of 1973-1974, its subsequent stagnation and eventual recovery. This paper employs general equi- librium theory to test whether this good news hypothesis is consistent with the behavior of US...

In this paper we investigate the relationship between stock market returns and economic activity by using signal decomposition techniques based on wavelet analysis. In particular, we apply the maximum overlap discrete wavelet transform (MODWT) to the DJIA stock price index and the industrial...

One of the most enduring debates in economics is whether financial development causes economic growth or whether it is a consequence of increased economic activity. Little research into this question, however has used a true causality framework. This paper fills this lacuna by using...