Inflation Expectations over the Life Cycle under Rational Inattention
by Jessica Schultz
Abstract
This paper explores how people track inflation over their lifetimes while facing tradeoffs between attention and certainty. It first employs a flexible modification of the Recursive Least Squares Learning approach from Malmendier and Nagel (MN) (2016) to find that households place weight on each inflation observation in a hump-shaped pattern over age when using past observations to set expectations about the future. This finding departs from MN, which models a strictly increasing weighting scheme with age. This paper then uses these findings to motivate a theory of Rational Inattention (RI) in inflation: as households age and accumulate wealth, their knowledge of the inflation rate becomes more important in their financial decisions–so they pay more attention to inflation. Consequently, as they decumulate wealth during their retirement, they have less reason to track inflation as accurately.
This paper subsequently formalizes this theory in a two-period RI model in which inflation-driven uncertainty in the interest rate between a working period and a retirement period can be reduced at a cost; this reduction in uncertainty occurs through observing an endogenously chosen signal that is correlated with the interest rate. It finds that as wealth increases before retirement, the optimal choice of signal precision increases as well. These findings help explain the hump-shaped weighting scheme for inflation observations in the empirical section, assuming changes in these weights over age are related in part to changes in household wealth. Ultimately, these findings suggest that monetary policy that focuses on long-term inflation stability or accounts for this heterogeneity may be most effective in anchoring consumer inflation expectations and increasing consumer welfare.
Professor Francesco Bianchi, Faculty Advisor
Professor Michelle Connolly, Faculty Advisor
JEL Codes: E2, E21, E31
Proposing an Alternative to the European Central Bank’s Fiscal Convergence Criteria
By Junaid Arefeen
The recent onset of the sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone has brought the viabil-ity of the Eurozone as a currency area into question. The unsustainable debt and deficit balances accumulated by several Eurozone nations since the adoption of the common currency in 1999, and the consequent incidence of high levels of sovereign default risk in the euro-area, indicate that the fiscal convergence criteria employed by the European Central Bank to monitor the fiscal discipline and sustainability of its members have been largely ine↵ectual. This paper draws upon the theory of optimum currency areas, and proposes a set of business cycle convergence criteria that can be employed as an alternate means to minimize the risk of fiscal imbalances and sovereign default. Economic theory suggests that a currency union with convergent business cycles will be insulated from asymmetric shocks, removing the need for countries to rely wholly on their fiscal policies when dealing with negative shocks (as would be the case in a currency union with non-synchronous countries su↵ering from negative asymmetric shocks). Therefore, as the risk of fiscal imbalances is minimized, a currency union with synchronous business cycles is expected to have low incidences of sovereign default risk. This paper tests this economic intuition empirically, and employs a multivariable panel regression model to determine the relationship between business cycle convergence and sovereign default risk (proxied using sovereign yield spreads). The regressions reveal that the degree of business cycle convergence is one of the main determinants of yield di↵erentials, and the relationship between the two is negative (as expected). The consistency of the results to numerous robustness checks provide a strong case for substituting the current fiscal convergence criteria with measures that assess the degree of business cycle convergence.
Advisors: Andrea Lanteri, Cosmin Ilut, Kent Kimbrough | JEL Codes: E32, E43, F34, F44, F45 | Tagged: Cycle Convergence, Optimum Currency Area, Sovereign Default Risk
Inflation Volatility and Economic Growth: A Disaggregated Analysis
By Nicholas Becker
Inflation volatility has been theorized to negatively affect real economic growth, but empirical analyses have returned somewhat mixed results. Constructing my own dataset of household group inflation rates by disaggregating and linking Consumer Expenditure Survey data with Consumer Price Index data, I analyze inflation volatility and economic growth from the ground-up. Calculating inflation volatility using a moving-window methodology, I find: 1) significant heterogeneity of inflation volatility across household groups; 2) a negative correlation between inflation volatility and economic growth from 2000-2012 for all household groups, with a stronger negative correlation at lower income levels; 3) a positive correlation between volatility and growth during expansions and a negative correlation between volatility and growth during recessions. Results suggest reducing inflation volatility and refining policymaking to account for the heterogeneity of inflation volatility could improve growth over the longrun. Further analysis is warranted.
Advisor: Nir Jaimovich, Alison Hagy | JEL Codes: E31, E32, O40 | Tagged: Inflation, Economic Growth
The Comprehensive Optimal Business Location Model
By Mitchel Gorecki
In order to ensure long run viability, a firm must understand the idea of optimal business location. In the designing of a strategy, it is important to not only evaluate the present market environment but to also account for possible future change. This paper will demonstrate the core ideas behind a comprehensive location model that will predict the optimal location for a business. The effectiveness of the model will be evaluated by using past data from Durham, North Carolina to predict current retail development. The model is determined to be successful by seeing if the trend recognized would be able to correctly identify the present location choices of firms. The model will be further used to predict the future development plans for businesses locating in the Durham area.
Advisor: Charles Becker | JEL Codes: E3, M1, M2,
