The author studies the evolution of the number of coexisting beliefs in a financial market in a framework where the paradigm driving the agents' behavior is left unspecified. The overreaching aim is to gain insights regarding the dynamic of the variety of beliefs in an auction based financial...

Economic downturns give rise to unexpected employment shocks that can reshape the distribution of population income, and hence produce a “middle-class squeeze”. However, there is limited empirical evidence testing the latter. This paper aims at testing the ‘middle-class squeeze’...