financial contagion and asset price dynamics

Recent literature shows how the destabilising effect of portfolio insurance activity on the price of the underlying asset depends on the liquidity of the asset market. We build a simple model where market timers shift capital around asset markets in order to exploit gains from temporary excess-volatility of asset prices. In this way, market timers increase the liquidity of asset markets reducing the excess volatility, while they increase the cross-market correlation, whereas long-ranged financial contagion eventually occurs. We show how liquidity of asset markets, cross-market correlation and excess volatility of asset prices depend on structural parameters of asset markets.