Disagreement is used as a measure of both investor heterogeneity and uncertainty. We study whether disagreement captures heterogeneity or uncertainty for the foreign exchange market. We do so by relating disagreement to alternative measures of uncertainty, as well as by taking advantage of the...

We find that investor sentiment should affect a firm's employment policy in a world with moral hazard and noise traders. Consistent with the model's predictions, we show that higher sentiment among US investors leads to: (1) higher employment growth worldwide; (2) lower labor productivity, as the...

Purpose: This paper documents a strong violation of the law of one price surrounding a large rights issue. Design/methodology/approach: If prices are right, the relation between the prices of shares and rights follows the outcome of a simple calculation. Findings: In the case of Royal Imtech...

The behavioural approach to decision making under uncertainty combines insights from psychology and sociology into economic decision making. It steps away from the normative homo economicus and introduces a positive approach to human decision making under uncertainty. We provide an overview of...

We estimate a generic agent-based model in which agents have heterogeneous beliefs about the future price to see to what extent behaviour differs across assets, and what this implies for market stability. We find evidence for behavioural heterogeneity for all asset classes, except for equities....

The literature on agent-based models has been highly successful in replicating many stylized facts of financial and macroeconomic time series. Over the past decade, however, also advances in the estimation of such models have been made. Due to the inherent heterogeneity of agents and...

This paper reviews the empirical literature on heterogeneous beliefs and asset price dynamics that challenges the traditional rational agent framework. Emphasis is given to the validation and estimation of (dynamic) heterogeneous agent models that have their roots in the agent-based literature....

We use Bulgarian firm-level data to investigate the impact of liquidity constraints on investment performance. Internal funds are an important determinant of investment in most industrialized countries. We test whether internal funds are important for firm investment during the current...

Sovereign default is the switching state between successful and unsuccessful Fund catalysis. We find the IMF to be effective in mobilising private capital flows to middle-income countries that participate in a Fund program, but do not restructure their debt. A debt restructuring is a clear...

This paper reviews the recent literature on economics and culture to investigate whether and how it considers the context. It first describes how culture reentered the economic literature from 1990s onwards. It then presents empirical studies on the relation between culture, institutions and...