Testing Near-Rationality Using Detailed Survey Data
Riksbank Research Paper Series No. 20
Sveriges Riksbank Working Paper Series No. 183
40 Pages Posted: 9 Nov 2006 Last revised: 30 Oct 2007
Date Written: October 19, 2006
Abstract
This paper considers the evidence of near-rationality, as described by Akerlof, Dickens, and Perry (2000). Using detailed surveys of household inflation expectations for the United States and Sweden, we find that the data are generally unsupportive of the near-rationality hypothesis. However, we document that household inflation expectations tend to settle around discrete and largely fixed focal points, suggesting that both U.S. and Swedish households gauge inflation prospects in rather broad, qualitative terms. Moreover, the combination of a low-inflation environment and an inflation target in Sweden has been accompanied by a disproportionately high proportion of Swedish households expecting no inflation. However, a similar low-inflation trend in the United States, which does not have an explicit inflation target, reveals no such rise in the proportion of households expecting no inflation. This observation suggests that the way the central bank communicates its inflation objective may influence inflation expectations independently of the inflation trend it actually pursues.
Keywords: Inflation expectations, Rationality, Inflation targeting, Phillips curve
JEL Classification: D1, D7, E6
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
Inflation Dynamics: A Structural Econometric Analysis
By Jordi Galí and Mark Gertler
-
Some Evidence on the Importance of Sticky Prices
By Mark Bils and Peter J. Klenow
-
Sticky Information Versus Sticky Prices: A Proposal to Replace the New Keynesian Phillips Curve
By N. Gregory Mankiw and Ricardo Reis
-
Sticky Information Versus Sticky Prices: A Proposal to Replace the New Keynesian Phillips Curve
By N. Gregory Mankiw and Ricardo Reis
-
By Varadarajan V. Chari, Patrick J. Kehoe, ...
-
Real Rigidities and the Non-Neutrality of Money
By Laurence Ball and David H. Romer
-
By Jordi Galí, Mark Gertler, ...
-
Control of the Public Debt: A Requirement for Price Stability?