This collection of essays uses the lens of rational expectations theory to examine how governments anticipate and plan for inflation, and provides insight into the pioneering research for which Thomas Sargent was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in economics. Rational expectations theory is based on...

A common set of mathematical tools underlies dynamic optimization, dynamic estimation, and filtering. In Recursive Models of Dynamic Linear Economies, Lars Peter Hansen and Thomas Sargent use these tools to create a class of econometrically tractable models of prices and quantities. They present...

For each of three types of ambiguity, we compute a robust Ramsey plan and an associated worst-case probability model. Ex post, ambiguity of type I implies endogenously distorted homogeneous beliefs, while ambiguities of types II and III imply distorted heterogeneous beliefs. Martingales...

We provide small noise expansions for the value function and decision rule for the recursive risk-sensitive preferences specified by Hansen and Sargent (1995), Hansen et al. (1999), and Tallarini (2000). We use the expansions (1) to provide a fast method for approximating solutions of dynamic...

This is a survey of bounded rationality, an area of theoretical macroeconomics which is receiving increased attention. The book is written by a leading macroeconomist who outlines the issues involved, describes some of the analytic tools that are being used, and shows how they can be applied in...

Robust control theory is a tool for assessing decision rules when a decision maker distrusts either the specification of transition laws or the distribution of hidden state variables or both. Specification doubts inspire the decision maker to want a decision rule to work well for a [empty set]...

We estimate vector autoregressions with drifting coefficients and stochastic volatility to investigate whether US inflation persistence has changed. We focus on the inflation gap, defined as the difference between inflation and trend inflation, and we measure persistence in terms of short- to...