Behavioral Theories of the Business Cycle
|
NBER Working Paper No. 12570
Issued in October 2006
NBER Program(s): EFG
We explore the business cycle implications of expectation shocks and of two well-known psychological biases, optimism and overconfidence. The expectations of optimistic agents are biased toward good outcomes, while overconfident agents overestimate the precision of the signals that they receive. Both expectation shocks and overconfidence can increase business-cycle volatility, while preserving the model's properties in terms of comovement, and relative volatilities. In contrast, optimism is not a useful source of volatility in our model.
Published: Nir Jaimovich & Sergio Rebelo, 2007. "Behavioral Theories of the Business Cycle," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 5(2-3), pages 361-368, 04-05.
This paper is available as PDF (147 K) or via email.
Acknowledgments
Machine-readable bibliographic record -
MARC,
RIS,
BibTeX
|
|
|
About
Support
The research activities of the NBER are funded by grants from federal research agencies, by private foundations, and by generous donations from our corporate associates and from private individuals. The NBER is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization. For information on supporting the NBER, please contact:
Mr. Denis Healy, Director of Development
NBER
1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138-5398
ph: 617-868-3900
email: dhealy@nber.org
Close
