| Abstract: | The behavioral origins of the stylized facts of financial returns have been addressed in a growing body of agent-based models of financial markets. While the traditional efficient market viewpoint explains all statistical properties of returns by similar features of the news arrival process, the more recent behavioral finance models explain them as imprints of universal patterns of interaction in these markets. In this paper we contribute to this literature by introducing a very simple agent-based model in which the ubiquitous stylized facts (fat tails, volatility clustering) are emergent properties of the interaction among traders. The simplicity of the model allows us to estimate the underlying parameters, since it is possible to derive a closed form solution for the distribution of returns. We show that the tail shape characterizing the fatness of the unconditional distribution of returns can be directly derived from some structural variables that govern the traders’ interactions, namely the herding propensity and the autonomous switching tendency.JEL classifications: G12; C61Earlier versions of this paper have been presented at the 11th Symposium of the Society of Nonlinear Dynamics and Econometrics, Florence, March 2003, the 8th Spring Meeting of Young Economists, Leuven, April 2003, the 8th Workshop on Economics with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, Kiel, May 2003, the 27th congress of Associazione per la Matematica Applicata alle Scienze Economiche e Sociali, Cagliari, September 2003; research seminars at the Department of Econometrics, University of Geneva, March 2003, and at the Department of Physics, University of Cagliari, May 2003, and have gained considerably from comments by many participants in these events. |
