Given a lack of perfect knowledge about the future, agents need to form expectations about variables affecting their decisions. We present an experiment where subjects sequentially receive signals about the true state of the world and need to form beliefs about which one is true, with payoffs...

What matters to economic decision-making is whether the economy has become more or less predictable. People and businesses use information around them to form judgements about what might happen in the future. The rise in uncertainty might be associated with increased concern about extreme...

We present an experiment where subjects sequentially receive signals about the true state of the world and need to form beliefs about which one is true, with payoffs related to reported beliefs. We control for risk aversion using the Offerman et al. (2009) technique. Against the baseline of...

Expectations play a crucial role in modern macroeconomic models. We replace the common assumption of rational expectations in a New Keynesian framework by the assumption that expectations are formed according to a heuristics switching model that has performed well in earlier work. We show how...

We review and evaluate methods previously adopted in the applied literature of adaptive learning in order to initialize agents' beliefs. Previous methods are classified into three broad classes: equilibrium-related, training sample-based, and estimation-based. We conduct several simulations...

We conduct a laboratory experiment to shed light on the cognitive limitations that may affect the way decision makers respond to changes in their economic environment. The subjects solve a tracking problem: they estimate the probability of a binary event, which changes stochastically. The...

Adaptive learning under constant-gain allows persistent deviations of beliefs from equilibrium so as to more realistically reflect agents' attempt of tracking the continuous evolution of the economy. A characterization of these beliefs is therefore paramount to a proper understanding of the role...

We introduce Behavioral Learning Equilibria (BLE) into a multivariate linear framework and apply it to New Keynesian DSGE models. In a BLE, boundedly rational agents use simple, but optimal AR(1) forecasting rules whose parameters are consistent with the observed sample mean and autocorrelation...

We propose a model of optimal decision making subject to a memory constraint. The constraint is a limit on the complexity of memory measured using Shannon’s mutual information, as in models of rational inattention; but our theory differs from that of Sims (2003) in not assuming costless...

How do households adjust their spending behavior in response to changes in home price expectations? We conduct a field experiment with a sample of Americans that links survey data on home price expectations to actual spending behaviour as measured in a rich home-scanner dataset. In the...