A number of studies have identifed patterns of positive correlation of returns, or comovement, among different traded securities. We distinguish three views of such comovement. The traditional 'fundamentals' view explains the comovement of securities through positive correlations in the rational...

We present an extrapolative model of bubbles. In the model, many investors form their demand for a risky asset by weighing two signals—an average of the asset's past price changes and the asset's degree of overvaluation. The two signals are in conflict, and investors “waver” over time in...

We study asset prices in an economy where some investors classify risky assets into different styles and move funds back and forth between these styles depending on their relative performance. Our assumptions imply that news about one style can affect the prices of other apparently unrelated...

Recent empirical research in finance has uncovered two families of pervasive regularities: underreaction of stock prices to news such as earnings announcements; and overreaction of stock prices to a series of good or bad news. In this paper, we present a parsimonious model of investor sentiment...

We use a survey of 452 Russian shops, most of which were privatized between 1992 and 1993, to measure the importance of alternative channels through which privatization promotes restructuring. Restructuring is measured as capital renovation, change in suppliers, increase in hours that stores...

Survey evidence suggests that many investors form beliefs about future stock market returns by extrapolating past returns: they expect the stock market to perform well (poorly) in the near future if it performed well (poorly) in the recent past. Such beliefs are hard to reconcile with existing...

Prospect theory, first described in a 1979 paper by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, is widely viewed as the best available description of how people evaluate risk in experimental settings. While the theory contains many remarkable insights, economists have found it challenging to apply these...

We show that prospect theory offers a rich theory of casino gambling, one that captures several features of actual gambling behavior. First, we demonstrate that, for a wide range of preference parameter values, a prospect theory agent would be willing to gamble in a casino even if the casino...

One of the most striking portfolio puzzles is the %u201Cdisposition effect%u201D: the tendency of individuals to sell stocks in their portfolios that have risen in value since purchase, rather than fallen in value. Perhaps the most prominent explanation for this puzzle is based on prospect...

We review a recent approach to understanding the equity premium puzzle. The key elements of this approach are loss aversion and narrow framing, two well-known features of decision-making under risk in experimental settings. In equilibrium, models that incorporate these ideas can generate a large...