The recent nonexperimental literature on social learning focuses on showing that observational learning exists, that is, individuals do indeed draw inferences by observing the actions of others. We take this literature a step further by analyzing whether individuals are Bayesian social learners....

Understanding the formation of consumer inflation expectations is considered crucial for managing monetary policy. This paper investigates how consumers form and update their inflation expectations using a unique information experiment embedded in a survey. We first elicit respondents'...

We use novel survey data to estimate how personal experiences affect household expectations about aggregate economic outcomes in housing and labor markets. We exploit variation in locally experienced house prices to show that individuals systematically extrapolate from recent locally experienced...

This report presents an overview of the Survey of Consumer Expectations, a new monthly online survey of a rotating panel of household heads. The survey collects timely information on consumers' expectations and decisions on a broad variety of topics, including but not limited to inflation,...

We investigate the determinants of students' university choice, with a focus on expected monetary returns, non-pecuniary factors enjoyed at school, and financial constraints, in the Pakistani context. To mitigate the identification problem concerning the separation of preferences, expectations,...

Despite a robust college premium, college attendance rates in the United States have remained stagnant and exhibit a substantial socioeconomic gradient. We focus on information gaps - specifically, incomplete information about college benefits and costs - as a potential explanation for these...

We estimate the elasticity of intertemporal substitution (EIS) - the elasticity of expected consumption growth with respect to variation in the real interest rate - using subjective expectations from the newly released FRBNY Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE). This dataset is unique, since it...

We provide a preference-based rationale for endogenous overconfidence. Horizon-dependent risk aversion, combined with a possibility to forget, can generate overconfidence and excessive risk taking in equilibrium. An "anxiety prone" agent, who is more risk-averse to imminent than to distant...

Under rational expectations, monetary policy is generally highly effective in stabilizing the economy. Aggregate demand management operates through the expectations hypothesis of the term structure: Anticipated movements in future short-term interest rates control current demand. This paper...

This paper proposes a theory of the fiscal foundations of inflation based on imperfect knowledge and learning. The theory is similar in spirit to, but distinct from, unpleasant monetarist arithmetic and the fiscal theory of the price level. Because the assumption of imperfect knowledge breaks...