Herding and Contrarianism: A Matter of Preference?
理论证明前景理论偏好会导致投资者因预期未来收益而采取羊群或反向策略，实验估计约70%的受试者偏好引发羊群行为，并量化了信息效率。
Abstract Herding and contrarian strategies produce informational inefficiencies when investors ignore private information, instead following or bucking past trends. In a simple market model, I show theoretically that investors with prospect theory preferences generically follow herding or contrarian strategies, but do so because of future returns as opposed to past trends. I conduct a laboratory experiment to test the theory and obtain an estimate of the distribution of preferences in the subject population. I find that approximately 70% of subjects have preferences that induce herding. Using the preference estimates, I quantify informational efficiencies and predict trade behavior in more general environments.