Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may a b s t r a c tThe paper analyzes the intensity of choice in an agent based financial optimization problem. Mean-variance optimizing agents choose among mutual funds of similar styles but varying performance. We specify a model for the allocation of new funds, switching between funds, and withdrawals and obtain statistically significant estimates of the intensity of choice parameter. This estimate is also given economic interpretation through the underperformance of funds that use an active style. We find that agents with relative risk aversion of 2 will move 1% of their funds from active to passive for an extra 34 basis points of return.

In order to study the expectation formation of financial institutions in the foreign exchange market we develop and apply a recursive selection and estimation algorithm to a dataset of surveyed foreign exchange market expectations. Responses are classified into two groups and forecasting models are endogenously determined within the groups. Estimation results reveal that a fundamentalistchartist model is capable of explaining a large portion of foreign exchange market expectations. Allowing panelists to switch between models significantly improves the fit of the model, especially at the relatively shorter forecast horizons. We find that the fundamentalist model is increasingly used as the forecast horizon extends. Finally, results indicate that model choice is based on a combination of periodspecific and individual-specific determinants.

A dynamic model of financial markets with learning is demonstrated to produce a selforganized system that displays critical behavior. The price contains private information that traders learn to extract and employ to forecast future value. Since the price reflects the beliefs of the traders, the learning process is self-referencing. As the market learns to correctly extract information from the price, the market deemphasizes private information. Despite the convergence of the model towards the parameters producing efficiency, pricing deviations remain constant due to the increased sensitivity of the price to small errors in information extraction produced by the model's own convergence. r

An informationally inefficiency market is produced without an exogenous source of noise in the price. Fundamental traders acquire private information directly through research. Regression traders employ a learning process to extract the private fundamental information from the public price. The relative popularity between these two strategies evolves based on performance. The model converges towards adoption of regression analysis to the point of creating instability, endogenously producing a noisy price. The lack of a revealing price in the coupled learning and population processes reflects the Grossman and Stiglitz (1980) impossibility of informationally efficient markets.

A dynamic model with learning and adaptation captures the evolution in trader beliefs and trading strategies. Through a process of learning and observation, traders improve their understanding of the market. Traders also engage in a process of adaptation by switching between trading strategies based on past performance. The asymptotic properties are derived analytically, demonstrating that convergence to efficiency depends on the model of adaptation.JEL Codes: G14, D82, D83, C61, C62