According to the favorite-longshot bias observed in pari-mutuel betting, the final distribution of bets overestimates the winning chance of longshots. This Paper proposes an explanation of this bias based on late betting by small privately informed bettors. These bettors have an incentive to...

This paper studies regimes of managed exchange rates for a small open economy with an integrated capital market, rational expectations in financial markets, sluggish nominal wages and prices, and supply shocks that follow a Brownian motion. Each regime can be characterized by the degree to which...

This paper develops a theoretical model of optimal quit behaviour for a worker who holds an option to quit but faces a fixed cost of quitting. A worker will accept the outside offer only if the net present value of the difference in expected future cash flows associated with the old and the new...

To check hyperinflation, Argentina pegged the peso at one US dollar in 1991. This stopped inflation in its tracks: but, with the rise of the dollar against the Euro and the substantial devaluation of the Brazilian real, the peso became increasingly over-valued leading to a significant...

We review the efficacy of three approaches to forecasting elections: econometric models that project outcomes on the basis of the state of the economy; public opinion polls; and election betting (prediction markets). We assess the efficacy of each in light of the 2004 Australian election. This...

We consider "robust stability" of a rational expectations equilibrium, which we define as stability under discounted (constant gain) least-squares learning, for a range of gain parameters. We find that for operational forms of policy rules, i.e. rules that do not depend on contemporaneous values...

With only minimal restrictions on security payoffs and trader preferences, noisy aggregation of heterogeneous information drives a systematic wedge between the impact of fundamentals on the price of a security, and the corresponding impact on cash flow expectations. From an ex ante perspective,...

We consider optimal monetary stabilization policy in a New Keynesian model with explicit microfoundations, when the central bank recognizes that private-sector expectations need not be precisely model-consistent, and wishes to choose a policy that will be as good as possible in the case of any...

We study a model where some investors (“hedgers”) are bad at information processing, while others (“speculators”) have superior information-processing ability and trade purely to exploit it. The disclosure of financial information induces a trade externality: if speculators refrain from...

New evidence suggests that individuals "learn from experience," meaning they learn from events occurring during their own lifetimes as opposed to the entire history of events. Moreover, they weigh more heavily the more recent events compared to events occurring in the more distant past. This...