The fact that human economic behaviour has a significant irrational element - one that is simultaneously hard-to-explain and highly predictable - has fascinated economists for decades from Fechner, 1860 to Shiller, 2005 and beyond. In this dissertation, I investigate the field from various...

We propose an extension of the class of rational expectations bubbles (REBs) to the more general rational beliefs setting of Kurz (1994a,b). In a potentially non-stationary but stationarizable environment, it is possible to hold more than one (small-r) “rational” expectation. When rational...

There has been a long-running debate about whether stock market prices are determined by fundamentals. To date no consensus has been reached. An important issue in this debate concerns the circumstances in which deviations from fundamentals are consistent with rational behavior. A...

There has been a long-running debate about whether stock market prices are determined by fundamentals. To date no consensus has been reached. An important issue in this debate concerns the circumstances in which deviations from fundamentals are consistent with rational behavior. A...

Can public information complement private information acquisition? What are the implicationsfor asset market performance? Our paper investigates by constructing a simple bond market in thelaboratory. Human investors observe public information on default probability and then, beforetrading,...