Financial markets can be at sub-optimal equilibria

Abstract

We use game theory and Santa Fe Artificial Stock Market, an agent-based model of an evolving stock market, to study the optimal frequency for traders to revise their market forecasting rules. We discover two things: There is a unique strategic Nash equilibrium in the game of choosing forecast revision rates, and this equilibrium is sub-optimal in the sense that traders’ earnings are not maximized an the market is inefficient. This strategic equilibrium is due to an analogue of the prisoner’s dilemma; the optimal global state is unstable because each trader has too much incentive to ‘defect’ and use forecasting rules that pull the market into thesub-optimal equilibrium.

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2009-01-28

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Mark Bedau
Reed College

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On the Exploratory Function of Agent-Based Modeling.Meinard Kuhlmann - 2021 - Perspectives on Science 29 (4):510-536.

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