In mainstream microeconomic theory firms are assumed to maximize profits. This useful assumption enables economists to derive demand and supply functions and estimate them with market data. The rarely asked question is: how do businessmen optimize and how closely do their efforts achieve optimum...

This paper presents tractable and efficient numerical solutions to general equilibrium models of asset prices and consumption when the representative agent has recursive preferences. It provides a discrete-time presentation of the approach of Fisher and Gilles (1998), treating continuous-time...

This paper applies evolutionary modeling to expectation formation of an asset's price. As a first step, I consider a population of n investors each of whom takes on one of two possible cultural variants. Every individual is a potential role model for all other individuals and can pass on their...

Various studies of asset markets have shown that traders are capable of learning. In this paper we replace human traders with artificial-intelligent software agents in a simulated stock market. They make predictions about the future, randomly submit their quotes, and transact at certain price. A...

This paper considers optimal decision-making in an environment with changing parameters. The decision maker's beliefs regarding these unknown, time-varying parameters are normal distributions and are updated according to Bayes rule. Optimal decisions involve a certain degree of experimentation....

We introduce adaptive learning behavior into a general equilibrium lifecycle economy with capital accumulation. Agents form forecasts of the rate of return to capital assets using least squares autoregressions on past data. We show that, in contrast to the perfect foresight dynamics, a dynamical...

There exists by now a sizeable literature that studies the dynamics of adaptive learning in stochastic macroeconomic models. A common starting point is to postulate that economic agents use standard econometric techniques to estimate the unknown parameters of the stochastic process of the...

We begin reviewing the standard Barro-Gordon model of inflation bias and considering the delegation of monetary policy to a more conservative central banker as suggested by Rogoff. We emphasise how inflation bias can be reduced, seemingly at the expense of increased stabilisation cost. We note...

Striking a balance between the costs and benefits of information processing is a fundamental problem in a dynamic system. The point of this analysis is to identify conditions that determine whether that balance actually occurs in an economy, with particular attention to the question of how...

In this paper we evaluate available packages designed for macroeconomic modelling. First we stress the qualities needed for building, maintaining and using an operational model, used professionally for forecasting purposes. We shall first address the global features of the process, then its...