bubbles
From The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, Second Edition, 2008
Edited by
Steven
N.
Durlauf
and
Lawrence
E.
Blume
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Abstract
Bubbles refer to asset prices that exceed an asset's fundamental value because current owners believe they can resell the asset at an even higher price. There are four main strands of models: (i) all investors have rational expectations and identical information, (ii) investors are asymmetrically informed and bubbles can emerge because their existence need not be commonly known, (iii) rational traders interact with behavioural traders and bubbles persist since limits to arbitrage prevent rational investors from eradicating the price impact of behavioural traders, (iv) investors hold heterogeneous beliefs, potentially due to psychological biases, and agree to disagree about the fundamental value.
Keywords
arbitrage; asset-pricing models; asymmetric information; autocorrelation; backward induction; bubbles; centipede game; central limit theorems; co-integration; efficient markets hypothesis; fiat money; gains from trade; hedge funds; limited liability; noise traders; overlapping generations model; rational expectations; risk aversion; transversality condition; unit roots
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See Also
How to cite this article
Brunnermeier, Markus K. "bubbles." The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Second Edition. Eds. Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics Online. Palgrave Macmillan. 25 May 2013 <http://www.dictionaryofeconomics.com/article?id=pde2008_S000278> doi:10.1057/9780230226203.0168

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