This paper investigates the contribution of social comparison effects to the disappointment aversion previously identified in a two-person real-effort competition (Gill and Prowse, 2012). "Social" and "asocial" versions of the Gill and Prowse experiment are compared, where the latter treatment...

Exploiting the natural experiment of the German reunification, we examine how consumers adapt to a new environment in their macroeconomic forecasting. We document that East Germans expect higher inflation and make larger forecast errors than West Germans even decades after reunification....

Using a representative online panel from the US, we examine how individuals’ macroeconomic expectations causally affect their personal economic prospects and their behavior. To exogenously vary respondents’ expectations we provide them with different professional forecasts about the...

Since the financial crisis, central banks have stressed the role of trust and communication in connection with their objectives and strategies for aligning the public's inflation expectations with their own and, consequently, improving the effectiveness of monetary policy. Assessing how much the...

Using a representative online panel from the US, we examine how individuals' macroeconomic expectations causally affect their personal economic prospects and their behavior. To exogenously vary respondents' expectations, we provide them with different professional forecasts about the likelihood...

Exploiting the natural experiment of the German reunification, we examine how consumers adapt to a new environment in their macroeconomic forecasting. We document that East Germans expect higher inflation and make larger forecast errors than West Germans even decades after reunification....

We use administrative and survey-based micro data to study the relationship between cognitive abilities (IQ), the formation of economic expectations, and the choices of a representative male population. Men above the median IQ (high-IQ men) display 50% lower forecast errors for inflation than...

Intertemporal substitution is at the heart of modern macroeconomics and finance as well as economic policymaking, but a large fraction of a representative population of men - those below the top of the distribution by cognitive abilities (IQ) - do not change their consumption propensities with...

In the context of income dynamics, we investigate whether aspects of agents' superior information relative to the econometrician's limited information are captured in subjective expectations data. It is natural, for instance, to assume that the econometrician cannot observe idiosyncratic shocks...

Neoclassical economic theory rules out systematic errors in consumption choice. According to the basic view, individuals know what they choose. They are able to predict how much utility an activity or a good produces for them now and in the future and they can maximize their utility. This...