Monetary Policy and Heterogeneous Expectations

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Date

2010-04-30

Authors

Branch, William A.
Evans, George W., 1949-

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

University of Oregon, Dept of Economics

Abstract

This paper studies the implications for monetary policy of heterogeneous expectations in a New Keynesian model. The assumption of rational expec- tations is replaced with parsimonious forecasting models where agents select between predictors that are underparameterized. In a Misspecification Equilibrium agents only select the best-performing statistical models. We demonstrate that, even when monetary policy rules satisfy the Taylor principle by adjusting nominal interest rates more than one for one with inflation, there may exist equilibria with Intrinsic Heterogeneity. Under certain conditions, there may exist multiple misspecification equilibria. We show that these findings have important implications for business cycle dynamics and for the design of monetary policy.

Description

25, 10 p. : ill. (some col.)

Keywords

Heterogeneous expectations, Monetary policy, Multiple equilibria, Adaptive learning

Citation