Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-hfldf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-31T22:09:43.175Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - On mistaken beliefs and resultant equilibria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Get access

Summary

Recently, with the growing interest in the notion of rational expectations and with the emphasis on the influence of expectations on inflation, the literature on these subjects has raised, not always explicitly, a fundamental problem for economic theory. This question may be phrased as follows. If agents in an economic model start out with personal, possibly mistaken, beliefs and then learn, to what extent will their learning lead them to a knowledge of the true situation, and will they be led to an equilibrium corresponding to a situation in which they have complete information? This question is not as trivial as it might appear precisely because of the nature of economic situations. Agents learn by observing and modifying their behavior in consequence, but in most economic situations what they observe is conditioned by their own behavior. This feedback and its consequences were explicitly discussed in a recent study by Bray (1981). In that study, despite mistaken beliefs, the agents are led to a rational expectations equilibrium, that is, one in which their subjective beliefs coincide with the objective situation. However, at each point in time before reaching the equilibrium there is a discrepancy between the two. In other cases it is easy to see that the feedback mechanism may prevent convergence occurring at all. Another alternative, one that is the main subject of this chapter, is that the model may be led to an outcome that is unrelated to any “real” equilibrium.

Type
Chapter
Information
Individual Forecasting and Aggregate Outcomes
'Rational Expectations' Examined
, pp. 147 - 168
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×