• Economic Analysis
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.27-55
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• 2011

Although many theoretical studies have tried to explain the volatility in financial markets using models of herd behavior, there have been few empirical studies on dynamic herding due to the technical difficulty of detecting herd behavior with time-series data. Thus, this paper theoretically extends a continuous beliefs system belonging to an agent based economic model by introducing a term representing agents'mutual dependence into each agent's utility function and derives a SV(stochastic volatility)-type econometric model. From this model the time-varying herding parameters are efficiently estimated by a Markov chain Monte Carlo method. Using monthly data of KOSPI and DOW, this paper provides some empirical evidences for stronger herding in the Korean stock market than in the U.S. stock market, and further stronger herding after the global financial crisis than before it. More interesting finding is that time-varying herd behavior has weak autocorrelation and the global financial crisis may increase its volatility significantly.