Survey Evidence on Diffusion of Investment Among Institutional Investors

Robert Shiller and John Pound

No 1851, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Contagion or epidemic models of financial markets are proposed in which interest in or attention to individual stocks is spread by word of mouth. The models give alternative interpretations of the random walk character of stock prices. A questionnaire survey of institutional investors was undertaken to ascertain the relevance of such models. Questions elicited what fraction of these investors were unsystematic and allowed themselves to be influenced by word-of-mouth communications or other salient stimuli. Rough indications of the infection rate and removal rate were produced. Investors in stocks whose price had recently increased dramatically to a high P/E ratio were contrasted with a control group of investors.

Date: 1986-03
Note: ME
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published as Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization vol. 12, p. 47-66 1989

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w1851.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1851

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w1851

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().