Using the panel component of the Michigan Survey of Consumers, we show that individuals, in particular women and ethnic minorities, are highly heterogeneous in their expectations of inflation. We estimate a model of inflation expectations based on learning from experience that also allows for...

We study the term structure of disagreement of professional forecasters for key macroeconomic variables. We document a novel set of facts: 1) forecasters disagree at all horizons, including the very long run; 2) the shape of the term structure of disagreement differs markedly across variables:...

We study the Green and Lin (2003) model of financial intermediation with two new features: traders may face a cost of contacting the intermediary, and consumption needs may be correlated across traders. We show that each feature is capable of generating an equilibrium in which some (but not all)...

Central bank communication plays an important role in shaping market participants’ expectations. This paper studies a simple nonlinear model of monetary policy in which agents have incomplete information about the economic environment. It shows that agents’ learning and the dynamics of the...

This paper analyzes how the formation of expectations constrains monetary and fiscal policy design. Economic agents have imperfect knowledge about the economic environment and the policy regime in place. Households and firms learn about the policy regime using historical data. Regime uncertainty...

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....

Public expectations and perceptions of inflation may affect economic decisions, and have subsequent effects on actual inflation. The Michigan Survey of Consumers uses questions about “prices in general” to measure expected and perceived inflation. Median responses track official measure of...

This paper studies the determinants of college major choice using a unique "information" experiment embedded in a survey. We first ask respondents their self-beliefs - beliefs about their own expected earnings and other major-specific outcomes conditional on various majors, their population...

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...

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...