BSV Investors Versus Rational Investors: An Agent-Based Computational Finance Model

BSV (Barberis, Shleifer and Vishny [Journal of Financial Economics49 (1998) 307–343]) model is one of the three major behavioral finance models. The existing BSV model is about how behavioral investors form beliefs, and is able to produce both overreaction and mean-reversion for a wide range of parameter values. However, the assumption that all investors in the market must all be BSV investors is a little strict and remains controversial. In this paper, we present an agent-based computational model of the dynamic game between BSV investors and rational investors. Time series from the artificial stock market are analyzed and two interesting findings are reported. First, the introduction of rational investors will not eliminate the anomalies of overreaction and mean-reversion. Second, no evidence is found that the BSV investors will lose money to their counterparts although their cognitive bias makes them form a false kind of expectation. On the contrary, some weak evidence is reported that BSV investors are less likely to bankrupt.