Using randomized control trials (RCTs) applied over time in different countries, we study how the economic environment affects how agents learn from new information. We show that as inflation has recently risen in advanced economies, both households and firms have become more attentive and...

Households' and firms' subjective inflation expectations play a central role in macroeconomic and intertemporal microeconomic models. We discuss how subjective inflation expectations are measured, the patterns they display, their determinants, and how they shape households' and firms' economic...

We study how individuals' memories of inflation shape their expectations about future inflation using both surveys and laboratory experiments. Recalling having lived through prior disinflations has pronounced effects on how long-lived people expect the current inflation episode to last....

Using Italian data that includes both inflation forecasts of firms and external information on their balance sheets, we study the causal effect of changes in the dispersion of beliefs about future inflation on the misallocation of resources. We find that as disagreement increases, so does...

In his 2004 inflation targeting manifesto, Marvin Goodfriend described US monetary policy as implicit inflation targeting and advocated explicit targeting. Summarizing the 1965-2000 US inflation experience, he highlighted the importance of evolving Fed credibility, which accords with our recent...

This paper examines the response of the term structure of interest rates to weekly money announcements. Estimated responses for both the pre- and post-October 1979 periods are first presented. Then, two competing hypotheses involving the policy anticipations and expected inflation effects are...

In a discretionary regime the monetary authority can print more money and create more inflation than people expect. But, although these inflation surprises can have some benefits, they cannot arise systematically in equilibrium when people understand the policymaker's incentives and form their...

This paper investigates the hypothesis that surprise changes in the money supply and anticipated inflation (the Mundell-Tobin effect) are both inversely related to the expected real interest rate. The two novel aspects of the investigation are tests of the hypothesized impact of money surprises...

This paper critically examines a number of maintained hypotheses that are necessarily being tested along with the basic notion derived from the rational expectations (RE) formulation of Lucas (1972) (19 73) that "only unanticipated money matters." The trend stationary representation of secular...

We study how different forms of communication influence the inflation expectations of individuals in a randomized controlled trial. We first solicit individuals' inflation expectations in the Nielsen Homescan panel and then provide eight different forms of information regarding inflation....