We report the results of a laboratory experiment, in which we observed the behavior of agents in a simple macroeconomic setting. The core question of this paper is whether standard macroeconomic models generate correct predictions despite their unrealistic assumptions of prefectly rational...

Previous experimental investigations have shown that expectations are not perfectly rational due to bias. Traditional adaptive models, however, in many cases do not perfectly describe the formation of expectations either. This paper makes two contributions to the experimental literature on the...

In this paper we report the results of a laboratory experiment, in which we observed the behavior of agents in a simple macroeconomic setting. The structure of the economy was only partially known to the players which is a realistic feature of our experiment. We investigate whether subjects...

According to the expectations channel, a fiscal consolidation may give rise to less contractionary, or even expansionary effects on consumption, despite a decline in current disposable income. Intuitively, people may accumulate a stock of savings in anticipation of the consolidation and may...

This paper presents a simple experiment on how laypeople form macroeconomic expectations. Subjects have to forecast inflation and GDP growth. By varying the information provided in different treatments, we can assess the importance of historical time-series information versus information...