We use the term structure of disagreement of professional forecasters to document a novel set of facts: (1) forecasters disagree at all horizons, including the long run; (2) the term structure of disagreement differs markedly across variables: it is downward sloping for real output growth,...

We study abstract macroeconomic systems in which expectations play an important role. Consistent with the recent literature on recursive learning and expectations, we replace the agents in the economy with econometricians. Unlike the recursive learning literature, however, the econometricians in...

We provide evidence that households discretize their inflation expectations so that what matters for durable consumption decisions is the broad inflation regime they expect. Using survey data, we document that a large share of the adjustment in the average inflation expectation comes from the...

In this paper we report the results of a repeated experiment in which a central bank buys bonds for cash in a quantitative easing (QE) operation in an otherwise standard asset market setting. The experiment is designed so that bonds have a constant fundamental value which is not affected by QE...

The role of uncertainty in the global economy is now widely recognized by policy-makers but its effects on the international financial system are less understood. In this paper we assess the impact of uncertainty fluctuations on the interconnectedness within the international system of equity...

The recent weakness in business investment among advanced economies has revived interest in investment models and opened a debate on the main drivers of the "investment slump" and what the policy response should be – if any. In particular, it is essential to assess precisely whether the...

We use the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters to characterize the dynamics of expectations at the micro level. We find that forecasters (i) have predictable forecast errors; (ii) disagree; (iii) fail to systematically update their forecasts in the wake of new information; (iv) disagree even...

Inflation target formulations differ across countries and over time. Most widespread are point targets, target ranges, hybrid combinations of the two, or mere definitions of price stability. This paper proposes a novel empirical measure of expectations anchoring based on the cross-sectional...

This paper shows that when agents learn from prices, large private uncertainty may result from a small amount of heterogeneity. As in a Phelps-Lucas island model, final producers look at the prices of their local inputs to infer aggregate conditions. However, market linkages between islands make...

This paper studies the social value of information about the future when agents are rationally inattentive. In a stylized OLG model of inflation the central bank (CB) can set money supply in response to the current price. The CB has perfect foresight about the future T shocks and releases this...