We study reputational herding in financial markets in a laboratory experiment. In the spirit of Dasgupta and Prat [2008], career concerns are introduced in a sequential asset market where wages for investors are set by subjects in the role of employers. Employers can observe investment behavior, but not investors' ability types. Thereby, reputational incentives may arise endogenously. We find that a sizable fraction of investors follows an established trend even in a setting where there are no reputational incentives. In a setting where there are reputational concerns, they do not seem to create substantial herd behavior.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.