IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/chsofr/v88y2016icp209-217.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The invisible hand and the rational agent are behind bubbles and crashes

Author

Listed:
  • Galam, Serge

Abstract

The 2000 dot-com crash and the 2008 subprime crisis have fueled the belief that the two classical paradigms of economics, the invisible hand and the rational agent, are not well appropriate to describe market dynamics and should be abandoned at the benefit of alternative new theoretical concepts. At odd with such a view, using a simple model of choice dynamics from sociophysics, the invisible hand and the rational agent paradigms are given a new legitimacy. Indeed, it is sufficient to introduce the holding of a few intermediate mini market aggregations by agents sharing their own private information, to recenter the invisible hand and the rational agent at the heart of market self regulation. An elasticity is discovered in the market efficiency mechanism due to the existence of an agent collective anticipation. This elasticity is shown to create spontaneous bubbles, which are rationally founded. At the same time, crashes occur at once when the limit of elasticity is reached. Plasticity can also be achieved through a combination of a crash with a sudden shift of the collective anticipation. Although the findings disclose a path to put an end to the bubble-crash phenomena, it is argued to be rationally not feasible. Bubbles and crashes are thus an intrinsic internal part of classical economics.

Suggested Citation

  • Galam, Serge, 2016. "The invisible hand and the rational agent are behind bubbles and crashes," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 209-217.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:chsofr:v:88:y:2016:i:c:p:209-217
    DOI: 10.1016/j.chaos.2016.03.011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096007791630090X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.chaos.2016.03.011?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Biondi, Yuri & Giannoccolo, Pierpaolo & Galam, Serge, 2012. "Formation of share market prices under heterogeneous beliefs and common knowledge," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(22), pages 5532-5545.
    2. Jørgen Vitting Andersen & Ioannis Vrontos & Petros Dellaportas & Serge Galam, 2014. "Communication impacting financial markets," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00982959, HAL.
    3. Ausloos, Marcel, 2016. "Modelling and measuring the irrational behaviour of agents in financial markets: Discovering the psychological solitonAuthor-Name: Dhesi, Gurjeet," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 119-125.
    4. Claudiu Herteliu & Bogdan Vasile Ileanu & Marcel Ausloos & Giulia Rotundo, 2015. "Effect of religious rules on time of conception in Romania from 1905 to 2001," Papers 1509.04564, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2015.
    5. Guillaume Deffuant & David Neau & Frederic Amblard & Gérard Weisbuch, 2000. "Mixing beliefs among interacting agents," Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 3(01n04), pages 87-98.
    6. Alan P. Kirman, 1992. "Whom or What Does the Representative Individual Represent?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 117-136, Spring.
    7. Robert J. Shiller, 1984. "Stock Prices and Social Dynamics," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 15(2), pages 457-510.
    8. Giulia Iori, 2000. "A Threshold Model For Stock Return Volatility And Trading Volume," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 3(03), pages 467-472.
    9. Pomorski, Mateusz & Krawczyk, Małgorzata J. & Kułakowski, Krzysztof & Kwapień, Jarosław & Ausloos, Marcel, 2016. "Inferring cultural regions from correlation networks of given baby names," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 445(C), pages 169-175.
    10. Serge Galam, 2008. "Sociophysics: A Review Of Galam Models," International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 19(03), pages 409-440.
    11. Diba, Behzad T & Grossman, Herschel I, 1988. "Explosive Rational Bubbles in Stock Prices?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(3), pages 520-530, June.
    12. Mantegna,Rosario N. & Stanley,H. Eugene, 2007. "Introduction to Econophysics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521039871, October.
    13. Gurjeet Dhesi & Marcel Ausloos, 2016. "Modelling and Measuring the Irrational behaviour of Agents in Financial Markets: Discovering the Psychological Soliton," Papers 1601.01553, arXiv.org.
    14. Galam, Serge, 2004. "Contrarian deterministic effects on opinion dynamics: “the hung elections scenario”," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 333(C), pages 453-460.
    15. Lux, Thomas, 1995. "Herd Behaviour, Bubbles and Crashes," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 105(431), pages 881-896, July.
    16. Shleifer, Andrei, 2000. "Inefficient Markets: An Introduction to Behavioral Finance," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198292272.
    17. Azariadis, Costas, 1981. "Self-fulfilling prophecies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 380-396, December.
    18. Galam, Serge & Jacobs, Frans, 2007. "The role of inflexible minorities in the breaking of democratic opinion dynamics," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 381(C), pages 366-376.
    19. Vandewalle, N. & Boveroux, Ph. & Minguet, A. & Ausloos, M., 1998. "The crash of October 1987 seen as a phase transition: amplitude and universality," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 255(1), pages 201-210.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gontis, V. & Havlin, S. & Kononovicius, A. & Podobnik, B. & Stanley, H.E., 2016. "Stochastic model of financial markets reproducing scaling and memory in volatility return intervals," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 462(C), pages 1091-1102.
    2. Vygintas Gontis & Shlomo Havlin & Aleksejus Kononovicius & Boris Podobnik & H. Eugene Stanley, 2015. "Stochastic model of financial markets reproducing scaling and memory in volatility return intervals," Papers 1507.05203, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2016.
    3. Duarte Queirós, Sílvio M. & Anteneodo, Celia, 2016. "Complexity in quantitative finance and economics," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 1-2.
    4. Aleksejus Kononovicius, 2017. "Empirical Analysis and Agent-Based Modeling of the Lithuanian Parliamentary Elections," Complexity, Hindawi, vol. 2017, pages 1-15, November.
    5. Gardini, L. & Radi, D. & Schmitt, N. & Sushko, I. & Westerhoff, F., 2022. "Causes of fragile stock market stability," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 483-498.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Serge Galam, 2016. "The invisible hand and the rational agent are behind bubbles and crashes," Papers 1601.02990, arXiv.org.
    2. Serge Galam, 2011. "Market efficiency, anticipation and the formation of bubbles-crashes," Papers 1106.1577, arXiv.org.
    3. Tiwari, Mukesh & Yang, Xiguang & Sen, Surajit, 2021. "Modeling the nonlinear effects of opinion kinematics in elections: A simple Ising model with random field based study," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 582(C).
    4. Khalil, Nagi & Toral, Raúl, 2019. "The noisy voter model under the influence of contrarians," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 515(C), pages 81-92.
    5. Quanbo Zha & Gang Kou & Hengjie Zhang & Haiming Liang & Xia Chen & Cong-Cong Li & Yucheng Dong, 2020. "Opinion dynamics in finance and business: a literature review and research opportunities," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 6(1), pages 1-22, December.
    6. Qian, Shen & Liu, Yijun & Galam, Serge, 2015. "Activeness as a key to counter democratic balance," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 432(C), pages 187-196.
    7. Takesue, Hirofumi, 2023. "Relative opinion similarity leads to the emergence of large clusters in opinion formation models," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 622(C).
    8. Stéphane Goutte & David Guerreiro & Bilel Sanhaji & Sophie Saglio & Julien Chevallier, 2019. "International Financial Markets," Post-Print halshs-02183053, HAL.
    9. Kyriazis, Nikolaos & Papadamou, Stephanos & Corbet, Shaen, 2020. "A systematic review of the bubble dynamics of cryptocurrency prices," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    10. repec:zbw:bofism:2006_035 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Taipalus, Katja, 2012. "Detecting asset price bubbles with time-series methods," Scientific Monographs, Bank of Finland, number 2012_047.
    12. María Cecilia Gimenez & Luis Reinaudi & Ana Pamela Paz-García & Paulo Marcelo Centres & Antonio José Ramirez-Pastor, 2021. "Opinion evolution in the presence of constant propaganda: homogeneous and localized cases," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 94(1), pages 1-11, January.
    13. Lu Zhang, 2017. "The Investment CAPM," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 23(4), pages 545-603, September.
    14. Fan, Kangqi & Pedrycz, Witold, 2016. "Opinion evolution influenced by informed agents," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 462(C), pages 431-441.
    15. Agnieszka Kowalska-Styczeń & Krzysztof Malarz, 2020. "Noise induced unanimity and disorder in opinion formation," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(7), pages 1-22, July.
    16. Taipalus, Katja, 2006. "Bubbles in the Finnish and US equities markets," Scientific Monographs, Bank of Finland, number 35/2006.
    17. repec:zbw:bofism:2012_047 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Galam, Serge, 2011. "Collective beliefs versus individual inflexibility: The unavoidable biases of a public debate," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 390(17), pages 3036-3054.
    19. Poindron, Alexis, 2021. "A general model of binary opinions updating," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 52-76.
    20. Taipalus, Katja, 2012. "Detecting asset price bubbles with time-series methods," Bank of Finland Scientific Monographs, Bank of Finland, volume 0, number sm2012_047, July.
    21. Ausloos, Marcel, 2021. "Hagiotoponyms in France: Saint popularity, like a herding phase transition," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 566(C).
    22. Brock, William A. & Hommes, Cars H. & Wagener, Florian O. O., 2005. "Evolutionary dynamics in markets with many trader types," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1-2), pages 7-42, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:chsofr:v:88:y:2016:i:c:p:209-217. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Thayer, Thomas R. (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/chaos-solitons-and-fractals .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.