IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/phsmap/v261y1998i3p581-598.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A hierarchical model of financial crashes

Author

Listed:
  • Sornette, Didier
  • Johansen, Anders

Abstract

We follow up our previous conjecture that large stock market crashes are analogous to critical points in statistical physics. The term “critical” refers to regimes of cooperative behavior, such as magnetism at the Curie temperature and liquid–gas transitions, and is characterized by the singular mathematical behavior of relevant observables. To illustrate the concept of criticality, we present a simple hierarchical model of traders exhibiting “crowd” behavior and show that it has a well-defined critical point, whose mathematical signature is a power law dependence of the price, modulated by log-periodic structures, as recently found in market data by several independent groups.

Suggested Citation

  • Sornette, Didier & Johansen, Anders, 1998. "A hierarchical model of financial crashes," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 261(3), pages 581-598.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:261:y:1998:i:3:p:581-598
    DOI: 10.1016/S0378-4371(98)00433-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437198004336
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/S0378-4371(98)00433-6?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. L. Ingber, 1990. "Statistical mechanical aids to calculating term structure models," Lester Ingber Papers 90ac, Lester Ingber.
    2. T. Hellthaler, 1995. "The Influence Of Investor Number On A Microscopic Market Model," International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 6(06), pages 845-852.
    3. Gennotte, Gerard & Leland, Hayne, 1990. "Market Liquidity, Hedging, and Crashes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(5), pages 999-1021, December.
    4. Bak, P. & Paczuski, M. & Shubik, M., 1997. "Price variations in a stock market with many agents," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 246(3), pages 430-453.
    5. Stauffer, Dietrich & Sornette, Didier, 1998. "Log-periodic oscillations for biased diffusion on random lattice," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 252(3), pages 271-277.
    6. L. Ingber & M.F. Wehner & G.M. Jabbour & T.M. Barnhill, 1991. "Application of statistical mechanics methodology to term-structure bond-pricing models," Lester Ingber Papers 91as, Lester Ingber.
    7. Takayasu, Hideki & Miura, Hitoshi & Hirabayashi, Tadashi & Hamada, Koichi, 1992. "Statistical properties of deterministic threshold elements — the case of market price," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 184(1), pages 127-134.
    8. Sornette, Didier & Johansen, Anders, 1997. "Large financial crashes," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 245(3), pages 411-422.
    9. A. Arnéodo & J.-F. Muzy & D. Sornette, 1998. "”Direct” causal cascade in the stock market," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 2(2), pages 277-282, March.
    10. S. Gluzman & V. I. Yukalov, 1997. "Renormalization Group Analysis of October Market Crashes," Papers cond-mat/9710336, arXiv.org, revised Apr 1998.
    11. Alain Arneodo & Jean-Philippe Bouchaud & Rama Cont & Jean-Francois Muzy & Marc Potters & Didier Sornette, 1996. "Comment on "Turbulent cascades in foreign exchange markets"," Science & Finance (CFM) working paper archive 9607120, Science & Finance, Capital Fund Management.
    12. Barnett,William A. & Geweke,John & Shell,Karl (ed.), 1989. "Economic Complexity: Chaos, Sunspots, Bubbles, and Nonlinearity," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521355636, October.
    13. L. Ingber, 1996. "Statistical mechanics of nonlinear nonequilibrium financial markets: Applications to optimized trading," Lester Ingber Papers 96nf, Lester Ingber.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. E. Samanidou & E. Zschischang & D. Stauffer & T. Lux, 2001. "Microscopic Models of Financial Markets," Papers cond-mat/0110354, arXiv.org.
    2. L. Ingber & J.K. Wilson, 1999. "Volatility of volatility of financial markets," Lester Ingber Papers 99vv, Lester Ingber.
    3. Ingber, Lester, 2000. "High-resolution path-integral development of financial options," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 283(3), pages 529-558.
    4. L. Ingber & R. Srinivasan & P.L. Nunez, 1996. "Path-integral evolution of chaos embedded in noise: Duffing neocortical analog," Lester Ingber Papers 96pi, Lester Ingber.
    5. Lester Ingber, 2020. "Developing Bid-Ask Probabilities for High-Frequency Trading," Virtual Economics, The London Academy of Science and Business, vol. 3(2), pages 7-24, April.
    6. E. Samanidou & E. Zschischang & D. Stauffer & T. Lux, 2007. "Agent-based Models of Financial Markets," Papers physics/0701140, arXiv.org.
    7. L. Ingber, 2020. "Forecasting with importance-sampling and path-integrals: Applications to COVID-19," Lester Ingber Papers 20fi, Lester Ingber.
    8. Lux, Thomas, 2008. "Applications of statistical physics in finance and economics," Kiel Working Papers 1425, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    9. L. Ingber & J.K. Wilson, 2000. "Statistical mechanics of financial markets: Exponential modifications to Black-Scholes," Lester Ingber Papers 00fm, Lester Ingber.
    10. L. Ingber, 2002. "Statistical mechanics of portfolios of options," Lester Ingber Papers 02po, Lester Ingber.
    11. L. Ingber, 1998. "Some Applications of Statistical Mechanics of Financial Markets," Lester Ingber Papers 98sa, Lester Ingber.
    12. Thomas Lux, 2009. "Applications of Statistical Physics in Finance and Economics," Chapters, in: J. Barkley Rosser Jr. (ed.), Handbook of Research on Complexity, chapter 9, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. L. Ingber, 1996. "Canonical momenta indicators of financial markets and neocortical EEG," Lester Ingber Papers 96cm, Lester Ingber.
    14. Anders Johansen & Didier Sornette & Olivier Ledoit, 1999. "Empirical and Theoretical Status of Discrete Scale Invariance in Financial Crashes," Finance 9903006, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. J. Doyne Farmer, 2002. "Market force, ecology and evolution," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 11(5), pages 895-953, November.
    16. Victor Lebreton, 2007. "Le trading algorithmique," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-00332823, HAL.
    17. Simone Alfarano & Thomas Lux, 2007. "A Minimal Noise Trader Model with Realistic Time Series Properties," Springer Books, in: Gilles Teyssière & Alan P. Kirman (ed.), Long Memory in Economics, pages 345-361, Springer.
    18. L. Ingber, 1994. "Statistical mechanics of neocortical interactions: Path-integral evolution of short-term memory," Lester Ingber Papers 94ni, Lester Ingber.
    19. Lux, Thomas & Alfarano, Simone, 2016. "Financial power laws: Empirical evidence, models, and mechanisms," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 3-18.
    20. L. Ingber, 1992. "Generic mesoscopic neural networks based on statistical mechanics of neocortical interactions," Lester Ingber Papers 92gm, Lester Ingber.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:phsmap:v:261:y:1998:i:3:p:581-598. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/physica-a-statistical-mechpplications/ .

    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.