Ample empirical and experimental evidence documents that individuals place greater weight on information gained through personal experience -- a phenomenon that Tversky and Kahneman (1982) call availability bias. I embed this bias in an overlapping generations equilibrium model in which the...

This chapter gives an overview of current research in evolutionary finance. We mainly focus on the survival and stability properties of investment strategies associated with the Kelly rule. Our approach to the study of the wealth dynamics of investment strategies is inspired by Darwinian ideas...

We develop a dynamic model to study the interaction between obfuscation and investor sophistication in retail financial markets. Taking into account different learning mechanisms within the investor population, we characterize the optimal timing of obfuscation for a profit-maximizing monopolist....

We introduce the concept of “negative bubbles” as the mirror image of standard financial bubbles, in which positive feedback mechanisms may lead to transient accelerating price falls. To model these negative bubbles, we adapt the Johansen-Ledoit-Sornette (JLS) model of rational expectation...

We evaluate how non-normality of asset returns and the temporal evolution of volatility and higher moments affects the conditional allocation of wealth. We show that if one neglects these aspects, as would be the case in a mean-variance allocation, a sighifiant cost would arise. The performance...

In this paper, dynamic option-based investment strategies are derived and illustrated for investors exhibiting downside loss aversion. The problem is solved in closed form when the stock market exhibits stochastic volatility and jumps. The specification of downside loss averse utility functions...

Our objective is to understand the trading strategy that would allow an investor to take advantage of quot;excessivequot; stock price volatility and quot;sentimentquot; fluctuations. We construct a general equilibrium model of sentiment. In it, there are two classes of agents and stock prices...

In this paper we present a two period model, where the agent's preferences are described by prospect theory as proposed by Kahneman and Tversky. We solve for the agent's portfolio decision. Our findings are that the changes in portfolio weights depend crucially on the reference point and the...