An informational cascade occurs when it is optimal for an individual, having observed the actions of those ahead of him, to follow the behavior of the preceding individual with regard to his own information. The authors argue that localized conformity of behavior and the fragility of mass...

This paper examines the effect of memory loss on the continuity of behavior. We consider a player (individual or firm) who remembers previous actions but not underlying rationales. In a stable environment, relative to a full-recall scenario, memory loss increases the probability of following old...

The basic paradigm of asset pricing is in vibrant flux. The purely rational approach is being subsumed by a broader approach based upon the psychology of investors. In this approach, security expected returns are determined by both "risk" and "misvaluation". This survey sketches a framework for...

We propose a theory of securities market under- and overreactions based on two well-known psychological biases: investor overconfidence about the precision of private information; and biased self-attribution, which causes asymmetric shifts in investors' confidence as a function of their...

This paper presents a model of tender offers in which the bid perfectly reveals the bidder's private information about the size of the value improvement that can be generated by a takeover. The authors argue that bidders with greater improvements will offer higher premia to ensure that...

We find a positive association between short-selling and accruals, and between short-selling and NOA, during 1988-2003. The accrual and NOA return anomalies are asymmetric. The absolute value of mean abnormal returns is larger for high-accrual firms than low-accrual firms on NASDAQ, but not on...

We document considerable return comovement associated with accruals after controlling for other common factors. An accrual-based factor-mimicking portfolio has a Sharpe ratio of 0.16, higher than that of the market factor or the SMB and HML factors of Fama and French (1993). In time series...

We analyze capital allocation in a conglomerate where divisional managers with uncertain abilities compete for promotion to CEO. A manager can sometimes gain by unobservably adding variance to divisional performance. Capital rationing can limit this distortion, increase productive efficiency,...

We review theory and evidence relating to herd behaviour, payoff and reputational interactions, social learning, and informational cascades in capital markets. We offer a simple taxonomy of effects, and evaluate how alternative theories may help explain evidence on the behavior of investors,...