Market efficiency, informational asymmetry and pseudo-collusion of adaptively learning agents

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Pastushkov, Aleksei
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Pastushkov, Aleksei
author_facet Pastushkov, Aleksei
contents We examine the dynamics of informational efficiency in a market with asymmetrically informed, boundedly rational traders who adaptively learn optimal strategies using simple multiarmed bandit (MAB) algorithms. The strategies available to the traders have two dimensions: on the one hand, the traders must endogenously choose whether to acquire a costly information signal, on the other, they must determine how aggressively they trade by choosing the share of their wealth to be invested in the risky asset. Our study contributes to two strands of literature: the literature comparing the effects of competitive and strategic behavior on asset price efficiency under costly information as well as the actively growing literature on algorithmic tacit collusion and pseudo-collusion in financial markets. We find that for certain market environments (with low information costs) our model reproduces the results of Kyle [1989] in that the ability of traders to trade strategically leads to worse price efficiency compared to the purely competitive case. For other environments (with high information costs), on the other hand, our results show that a market with strategically acting traders can be more efficient than a purely competitive one. Furthermore, we obtain novel results on the ability of independently learning traders to coordinate on a pseudo-collusive behavior, leading to non-competitive pricing. Contrary to some recent contributions (see e.g. [Cartea et al. 2022]), we find that the pseudo-collusive behavior in our model is robust to a large number of agents, demonstrating that even in the setting of financial markets with a large number of independently learning traders non-competitive pricing and pseudo-collusive behavior can frequently arise.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_05032
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Market efficiency, informational asymmetry and pseudo-collusion of adaptively learning agents
Pastushkov, Aleksei
Theoretical Economics
Computer Science and Game Theory
Computational Finance
We examine the dynamics of informational efficiency in a market with asymmetrically informed, boundedly rational traders who adaptively learn optimal strategies using simple multiarmed bandit (MAB) algorithms. The strategies available to the traders have two dimensions: on the one hand, the traders must endogenously choose whether to acquire a costly information signal, on the other, they must determine how aggressively they trade by choosing the share of their wealth to be invested in the risky asset. Our study contributes to two strands of literature: the literature comparing the effects of competitive and strategic behavior on asset price efficiency under costly information as well as the actively growing literature on algorithmic tacit collusion and pseudo-collusion in financial markets. We find that for certain market environments (with low information costs) our model reproduces the results of Kyle [1989] in that the ability of traders to trade strategically leads to worse price efficiency compared to the purely competitive case. For other environments (with high information costs), on the other hand, our results show that a market with strategically acting traders can be more efficient than a purely competitive one. Furthermore, we obtain novel results on the ability of independently learning traders to coordinate on a pseudo-collusive behavior, leading to non-competitive pricing. Contrary to some recent contributions (see e.g. [Cartea et al. 2022]), we find that the pseudo-collusive behavior in our model is robust to a large number of agents, demonstrating that even in the setting of financial markets with a large number of independently learning traders non-competitive pricing and pseudo-collusive behavior can frequently arise.
title Market efficiency, informational asymmetry and pseudo-collusion of adaptively learning agents
topic Theoretical Economics
Computer Science and Game Theory
Computational Finance
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.05032