Belief Dispersion in the Stock Market

Atmaz, A and Basak, S (2018) Belief Dispersion in the Stock Market. Journal of Finance, 73 (3). pp. 1225-1279. ISSN 0022-1082

Abstract

We develop a dynamic model of belief dispersion with a continuum of investors differing in beliefs. The model is tractable and qualitatively matches many of the empirical regularities in a stock price, its mean return, volatility, and trading volume.We find that the stock price is convex in cash-flow news and increases in belief dispersion, while its mean return decreases when the view on the stock is optimistic, and vice versa when pessimistic. Moreover, belief dispersion leads to a higher stock volatility and trading volume. We demonstrate that otherwise identical two-investor heterogeneous-beliefs economies do not necessarily generate our main results.