Expectations formation and stability of large socioeconomic systems

Jean-Michel Grandmont ()

No 1997088, LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE)

Abstract: This paper attemps to identify, in a framework deliberately stripped of unnecessary technical- ities, some of the basic reasons why adaptive learning may or may not lead to stability and convergence to self-fulfilling expectations in large socioeconomic systems where no agent, or collection of agents, can act to manipulate macroeconomic outcomes. It is shown that if agents are somewhat uncertain about the local stability of the system, and are accordingly ready to extrapolate a large range of regularities (trends) that may show up in past small deviations from equilibrium, including divergent ones, the learning dynamics is locally divergent. On the other hand, if agents are fairly sure of the local stability of the system, and extrapolate only convergent trends out of small past deviations from equilibrium, one may get local stability. This “uncertainty principle” does show up in a wide variety of contexts: smooth or discontin- uous, finite or infinite memory learning rules, error learning, recursive least squares, Bayesian learning.

Keywords: Learning dynamics; convergence to rational expectations; error learning; least squares learning; Bayesian learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 D84 E10 E32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1997-11-01
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Related works:
Journal Article: Expectations Formation and Stability of Large Socioeconomic Systems (1998)
Working Paper: Expectations Formation and Stability of Large Socioeconomic Systems (1997)
Working Paper: Expectations formation and stability of large socioeconomic systems (1994)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cor:louvco:1997088

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