  This paper is intended as an investigation of the statistical properties of
{\it absolute log-returns}, defined as the absolute value of the logarithmic
price change, for the Nikkei 225 index in the 28-year period from January 4,
1975 to December 30, 2002. We divided the time series of the Nikkei 225 index
into two periods, an inflationary period and a deflationary period. We have
previously [18] found that the distribution of absolute log-returns can be
approximated by the power-law distribution in the inflationary period, while
the distribution of absolute log-returns is well described by the exponential
distribution in the deflationary period.\par To further explore these empirical
findings, we have introduced a model of stock markets which was proposed in
[19,20]. In this model, the stock market is composed of two groups of traders:
{\it the fundamentalists}, who believe that the asset price will return to the
fundamental price, and {\it the interacting traders}, who can be noise traders.
We show through numerical simulation of the model that when the number of
interacting traders is greater than the number of fundamentalists, the
power-law distribution of absolute log-returns is generated by the interacting
traders' herd behavior, and, inversely, when the number of fundamentalists is
greater than the number of interacting traders, the exponential distribution of
absolute log-returns is generated.
