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Recursive Collective Actions Problems: The Structure Of Procyclicality In Financial And Monetary Markets, Macroeconomies And Formally Similar Contexts, Robert C. Hockett
Recursive Collective Actions Problems: The Structure Of Procyclicality In Financial And Monetary Markets, Macroeconomies And Formally Similar Contexts, Robert C. Hockett
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
The hallmark of a collective action problem is its aggregating multiple individually rational decisions into a collectively irrational outcome. Arms races, “commons tragedies” and “prisoners’ dilemmas” are well-known, indeed well-worn examples. What seem to be less widely appreciated are two complementary propositions: first, that some collective action problems bear iterative, self-exacerbating structures that render them particularly destructive; and second, that some of the most formidable challenges faced by economies, societies, and polities are iteratively self-worsening problems of precisely this sort. Financial markets, monetary systems and macroeconomies in particular are rife with them – as are other complex systems subject to …
Complexity, Innovation, And The Regulation Of Modern Financial Markets, Dan Awrey
Complexity, Innovation, And The Regulation Of Modern Financial Markets, Dan Awrey
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
The intellectual origins of the global financial crisis (GFC) can be traced back to blind spots emanating from within conventional financial theory. These blind spots are distorted reflections of the perfect market assumptions underpinning the canonical theories of financial economics: modern portfolio theory, the Modigliani and Miller capital structure irrelevancy principle, the capital asset pricing model and, perhaps most importantly, the efficient market hypothesis. In the decades leading up to the GFC, these assumptions were transformed from empirically (con)testable propositions into the central articles of faith of the ideology of modern finance: the foundations of a widely held belief in …
Bubbles, Busts, And Blame, Robert C. Hockett
Bubbles, Busts, And Blame, Robert C. Hockett
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
I argue that financial asset price bubbles and busts, such as those we have recently experienced in the mortgage and securities markets, are compatible with market efficiency, individual rationality, and even ethically unobjectionable behavior. The reason is that they constitute classic recursively self-amplifying collective action problems, the hallmark of which is the efficient aggregation of individually rational behaviors into collectively calamitous outcomes. In the present case, individuals rationally "legged the spread" between cheap borrowing costs and credit-fueled capital gains rates, neither of which market actors could affect in their individual capacities even when knowing that credit would have eventually to …