The Instability of Markets

Tad Hogg, Bernardo A. Huberman and Michael Youssefmir
Dynamics of Computation Group
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
Palo Alto, CA 94304
hogg@parc.xerox.com




Abstract

Recent developments in the global liberalization of equity and currency markets, coupled to advances in trading technologies, are making markets increasingly interdependent. This increased fluidity raises questions about the stability of the international financial system. In this paper, we show that as couplings between stable markets grow, the likelihood of instabilities is increased, leading to a loss of general equilibrium as the system becomes increasingly large and diverse.
postcript (125K)