Models of macroeconomic learning are populated by agents who possess a great deal of knowledge of the "true" structure of the economy, and yet ignore the impact of their own learning on that structure; they may learn about an equilibrium, but they do not learn within it.  An alternative learning...

Disinflationary episodes are a valuable source of information for economic agents trying to learn about the economy.  This paper is especially interested in how a policymaker can themselves learn by disinflating.  The approach differs from the existing literature, which typically focuses on...

Microfounded macromodels (SDGE models) represent the dominant approach in academic macroeconomics, and their influence now extends to the forecasting models of central banks.  These models appear to adopt a clear methodological approach, which promotes internal consistency above external...

Saddlepath learning occurs when agents learn adaptively using a perceived law of motion that has the same form as the saddlepath relationship in rational expectations equilibrium.  Under saddlepath learning, we obtain a completely general relationship between determinacy and e-stability, and...

This paper explores the effect of news shocks on the current account and other macroeconomic variables using worldwide giant oil discoveries as a directly observable measure of news shocks about future output - the delay between a discovery and production is on average 4 to 6 years.  We first...

If players learn to play an infinitely repeated game using Bayesian learning, it is known that their strategies eventually approximate Nash equilibria of the repeated game under an absolute-continuity assumption on their prior beliefs.  We suppose here that Bayesian learners do not start with...

A seller wishes to prevent the discovery of rival offers by its prospective customers.  We study sales techniques which serve this purpose by making it harder for a customer to return to buy later after a search for alternatives.  These include making an exploding offer, offering a "buy-now"...

We study evolutionary dynamics in assignment games where many agents interact anonymously at virtually no cost.  The process is decentralized, very little information is available and trade takes place at many different prices simultaneously.  We propose a completely uncoupled learning process...

This paper presents a model of a rational seller who is actively learning the slope of his demand curve via his pricing strategy.  Consequently, this seller optimally experiments with his price.  Resulting price patterns show a lot of discreteness (as observed in the data), which has proved to...

This paper investigates discount pricing, the common marketing practice whereby a price is listed as a discount from an earlier, or regular, price.  We discuss two reasons why a discounted price - as opposed to a mearly low price - can make a rational consumer more willing to purchase the...