Testing Near-Rationality using Detailed Survey Data

Michael F. Bryan () and Stefan Palmqvist ()
Additional contact information
Michael F. Bryan: Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Postal: Research Department, P.O. Box 6387, Cleveland, OH 44101-1387, U.S.A
Stefan Palmqvist: Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of Sweden, Postal: Sveriges Riksbank, SE-103 37 Stockholm, Sweden

No 183, Working Paper Series from Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden)

Abstract: This paper considers the evidence of “near-rationality,” as described by Akerlof, Dickens, and Perry (2000). Using detailed surveys of household inflation expectations for the United States and Sweden, we find that the data are generally unsupportive of the near-rationality hypothesis. However, we document that household inflation expectations tend to settle around discrete and largely fixed “focal points,” suggesting that both U.S. and Swedish households gauge inflation prospects in rather broad, qualitative terms. Moreover, the combination of a low-inflation environment and an inflation target in Sweden has been accompanied by a disproportionately high proportion of Swedish households expecting no inflation. However, a similar low-inflation trend in the United States, which does not have an explicit inflation target, reveals no such rise in the proportion of households expecting no inflation. This observation suggests that the way the central bank communicates its inflation objective may influence inflation expectations independently of the inflation trend it actually pursues.

Keywords: inflation expectations; rationality; inflation targeting; Phillips curve (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 D70 E60 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2005-04-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-mic
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:rbnkwp:0183

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