In recent years, U.S. government entities have become increasingly active as commercial participants in corporate restructurings by providing rescue loans when private market funding is unavailable. Like private lenders, the government can effectively control the operations of distressed...

This paper proposes a new double-question survey method that elicits information about how individuals subjective belief valuations are compared and related to their price expectations. An individual respondent is presented with two sets of questions, one that asks about his/her belief regarding...

How can fire sales for financial assets happen when the economy contains well capitalized, but non-specialist investors? Our explanation combines rational expectations equilibrium and "lemons" models. When specialist (informed) market participants are liquidity-constrained, prices become less...

We study the effect of ambiguity on the formation of bubbles and on the occurrence of crashes in experimental asset markets à la Smith, Suchanek, and Williams (1988). We extend their framework to an environment where the fundamental value of the asset is ambiguous. We show that, when the...

This paper argues that short selling might give rise to bubbles that would otherwise not exist in equilibrium. It is crucial for the argument that short selling is not the same as issuing an asset: it may require buying the stock later on. An asset with no fundamental value might be traded at...

We study the cascading dynamics immediately before and immediately after 219 market shocks. We define the time of a market shock T_{c} to be the time for which the market volatility V(T_{c}) has a peak that exceeds a predetermined threshold. The cascade of high volatility "aftershocks" triggered...

This paper aims to explore the relevance of the asymmetric information and the theory of argumentation TA in the complex area of financial crises. Specifically, we investigated the scope of the phenomenon of persuasion in advertising. It examines advertisements in publications notable economic...

The efficiency of financial markets, but also their potential to produce bubbles are central topics in academic and professional debates. Yet, little is known about the contribution of financial professionals to price efficiency. We run 116 experimental markets with 412 professionals and 502...

We use transaction-level data on the UK government bond, repo and interest-rate swap markets to analyse market liquidity, investor behaviour and price dynamics during the market disruptions in September-October 2022. We provide a detailed account of how selling pressure in gilt markets – due...

The efficiency of financial markets and their potential to produce bubbles are central topics in academic and professional debates. Yet, surprisingly little is known about the contribution of financial professionals to price efficiency. To close this gap, we run 86 experimental markets with 294...