Managerial Overconfidence in Initial Public Offering Decisions and Its Impact on Macrodynamics and Financial Stability: Analysis Through an Agent-Based Model

Abstract

This study aims to connect the two strands of literature, i.e. behavioral corporate finance and agent-based macroeconomics to assess the impact of managerial overconfidence both at the micro and at the macro level. More specifically, we build a macroeconomic Agent-Based Model (ABM) calibrated for the specific case of Poland to explore whether overconfidence of top corporate managers in the context of their Initial Public Offering (IPO) decisions is detrimental or not for the firms being managed in that way, for the financial market dynamics and the selected macroeconomic indicators in Poland. We modelled heterogeneous firms with different IPO decision criteria depending on degree of managerial overconfidence. Our model also included a banking sector and a stock market that interact with the real economy. We found that there is a contradiction between the micro and the macro impact of overconfidence. Overconfident firms showed better performances in terms of output than other firms. But they were also more exposed to stock market volatility which makes them more likely to default. Higher default rate of overoptimistic firms negatively impacted the banking sector and increases financial instability. In turn, financial instability harmed the economy as a whole. We also observed that an increase in the proportion of overconfident firms is associated with a decrease in aggregate output although overconfident firms showed better individual performances. Finally, we run policy shocks and show that the increased financial instability can be offset by strengthening regulation of the banking sector.