Asset Market Experiments with Diverse Information

Abstract

On financial markets, information is a highly demanded resource and processing it to (potentially) generate excess returns drives the activities of many market participants. Not surprisingly, this high relevance of information in markets culminates in a high research interest focusing on how information affects traders' behavior and market outcomes. It is, however, challenging to meet this interest with empirical data as it is almost impossible to observe or control, which information traders possess in real markets. Therefore, laboratory environments are a perfect tool to address research questions emerging in this field as they allow researchers to design and control all relevant aspects, in particular, the information structure prevailing in a market. In this paper, we review the experimental finance literature investigating markets with different information structures to better understand how these structures influence trader behavior and market outcomes. By doing so, we provide the interested reader with a comprehensive overview of the main research areas and the respective results.