Workshop: Experimental Research in The Theory of Asset Pricing

最近，资产定价理论因无法解释现场市场的历史数据而受到批评。然而，它糟糕的记录并不意味着它在科学上是无效的。我们（作为实验家）的经验是，理论家并不了解资产定价理论的科学记录（它在受控环境下的效果如何）。研讨会的目的是让理论家们认识到这一记录。它不仅应该让他们意识到（理论）的成功，而且还应该意识到理论在哪里失败（以及如何解决失败）。人们希望这次研讨会预示着一个理论家与实验家更密切合作的新时代。pi不仅在金融市场实验方面有着悠久的历史，而且在一般的实验方法方面也有着悠久的历史（成功地为神经科学做出了贡献），他们还在资产定价理论方面发表过文章。正因为如此，他们在调和理论家和实验家之间提出的对话方面处于独特的地位。金融经济学是相当抽象和数学化的，它的价值很难仅仅通过观察现实世界的金融市场来确定，因为金融市场在一个复杂的环境中运行，许多关键变量要么无法观察到，要么无法可靠地测量。然而，在过去的十年里，已经开发出了在实验室里研究金融市场的工具，在实验室里，真实的人用真实的钱进行交易。控制设置旨在模拟理论背景，因此已被证明是一个理想的试验场。研讨会的目的是把理论家和实验家聚集在一起，以便开始对话。实验学家被教导理论的哪些方面是定义的，因此，需要测试，理论家被鼓励用实验来解释他们的模型，以衡量科学有效性，这需要理论家理解实验方法。因此，我们将物理科学的长期传统引入金融。其目标是将金融转变为一门循证学科。这最终将有利于金融市场的政策制定和规则制定，到目前为止，这些政策制定和规则制定主要是基于模型的，或者在极少数情况下，只有在有数据的情况下，才能通过对历史数据的实证分析来获得信息。

Asset pricing theory has recently been criticized for its inability to explain historical data from field markets. Yet its poor record does not mean that it is scientifically invalid. Our experience (as experimentalists) is that theorists are not aware of the scientific record of asset pricing theory (how well it works in a controlled setting). The aim of the workshop is to sensitize theorists to this record. It should make them aware not only of the successes (of the theory), but also of where the theory fails (and how the failures can be addressed). It is hoped that the workshop heralds a new era where theorists work in closer collaboration with experimentalists. The PIs have a long track record not only in financial markets experimentation, but also in the experimental method in general (having contributed successfully to neuroscience), and they have published in asset pricing theory. As such, they are uniquely positioned to moderate the proposed dialogue between theorists and experimentalists.Financial economics is rather abstract and mathematical, and its value is difficult to ascertain from merely observing real-world financial markets, which operate in a complex environment where many key variables either remain unobserved or cannot be measured reliably. In the last decade, however, tools have been developed to study financial markets in the laboratory, where real people trade for real money. The controlled setting is designed to emulate the theoretical context and as such has proven to be an ideal testing ground. The workshop aims at bringing together theorists and experimentalists in order to start a dialogue. Experimentalists are to be taught what aspects of the theory are defining, and hence, need to be tested, and theorists are to be encouraged to explain their models in terms of experiments with which to gauge scientific validity, which requires theorists to understand the experimental approach. We thereby import into finance a longstanding tradition from the physical sciences. The goal is to move finance to an evidence-based discipline. This will ultimately benefit financial markets policy formulation and rule making, which until now have primarily been model-based, or in the rare occasions where the data were available, informed only by empirical analysis of historical data.