Asset price dynamics in a financial market with fundamentalists and chartists

In this paper we consider a model of the dynamics of speculative markets involving the interaction of fundamentalists and chartists. The dynamics of the model are driven by a two-dimensional map that in the space of the parameters displays regions of invertibility and noninvertibility. The paper focuses on a study of local and global bifurcations which drastically change the qualitative structure of the basins of attraction of several, often coexistent, attracting sets. We make use of the theory of critical curves associated with noninvertible maps, as well as of homoclinic bifurcations and homoclinic orbits of saddles in regimes of invertibility.