Learning from Prices: Public Communication and Welfare

Manuel Amador, Pierre-Olivier Weill

NBER Working Paper No. 14255
Issued in August 2008
NBER Program(s):   EFG   ME

We study the effect of releasing public information about productivity or monetary shocks when agents learn from nominal prices. While public releases have the benefit of providing new information, they can have the cost of reducing the informational efficiency of the price system. We show that, when agents have private information about monetary shocks, the cost can dominate, in that public releases increase uncertainty about fundamentals. In some cases, public releases can create or eliminate multiple equilibria. Our results are robust to adding velocity shocks, imperfectly observable prices, large idiosyncratic shocks, and introducing a bond market.

(342 K)

Published: Manuel Amador & Pierre-Olivier Weill, 2010. "Learning from Prices: Public Communication and Welfare," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(5), pages 866 - 907.

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