Based on a panel of German professional forecasts for 1970 to 2003 we find that growth and inflation forecasts are unbiased and weakly, but not strongly efficient. Besides the effect of diverging forecasting dates, no other substantial differences in forecasting quality are found among...

This paper investigates the relevance of the sticky information model of Mankiw and Reis (2002) and Carroll (2003) for four major European economies (France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom). As opposed to the benchmark rational expectation models, households in the sticky information...

We analyze cross-household inflation dispersion in Europe using "fictitious" monthly inflation rates for several household categories (grouped according to income levels, household size, socio-economic status, age) for the period from 1997 to 2008. Our analysis is carried out on a panel of 23 up...

This paper investigates the relevance of the sticky information model of Mankiw and Reis (2002) and Carroll (2003) for four major European economies (France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom). As opposed to the benchmark rational expectation models, households in the sticky information...

We analyze cross-household inflation dispersion in Europe using “fictitious” monthly inflation rates for several household categories (grouped according to income levels, household size, socio-economic status, age) for the period from 1997 to 2008. Our analysis is carried out on a panel of...

The paper analyses the reasons for departures from strong rationality of German business cycle forecasts based on annual observations from 1963 to 2004. We rely on forecasts from the joint forecast of the so-called "six leading" forecasting institutions in Germany. We test for a non-linear...

We analyze cross-household inflation dispersion in Europe using “fictitious” monthly inflation rates for several household categories (grouped according to income levels, household size, socio-economic status, age) for the period from 1997 to 2008. Our analysis is carried out on a panel of...

We compare the formation of quantitative inflation perceptions and expectations from questions asked either in terms of price changes or in terms of the inflation rate in a new socio-economic household survey established at the University of Hamburg. In addition to socio-demographic...