The Formation of Consumer Inflationary Expectations in Australia*

This paper analyzes the quantitative price expectations of consumers as obtained from consumer surveys. Price expectations are considered as functions of (i) past rates of inflation (ii) other economic variables, and (iii) consumer sentiment variables. The dominant influence on expectations is the most recent change in the consumer price index. Wage-indexation decisions and changes in the money supply also exert a significant influence on mean expectations. The variability of price expectations across consumers is proportional to the mean level of expectations.     

CONSUMERS' INFLATION EXPECTATIONS AND MONETARY POLICY IN EUROPE

This article analyses the effects of monetary policy decisions on inflation expectations of European consumers. Using a novel approach, I convert qualitative survey responses of consumers in various European countries into a quantitative time series of inflation expectations. I investigate the effects of unanticipated movements in interest rates and inflation on inflation expectations across European countries. I inter alia seek to explore whether the reaction differs of consumers in countries with more credible central banks than those in less credible countries.     

异质预期演化与我国房价泡沫的形成

本文基于演化金融方法,将房地产市场投资者预期分为稳健型预期（投资策略是根据基本面投资）和风险型预期（投资策略是追涨杀跌）两类,同时投资者会根据市场环境调整自身预期,在此基础上测度了不同类型预期在我国房价泡沫形成中的作用,并进一步区分了不同城市房价泡沫的类型。研究表明：尽管稳健型预期对房价泡沫存在显著抑制效应,但风险型预期的放大效应在房价泡沫形成中起了主导作用;此外,东部地区城市房价泡沫主要属于强风险型预期与强稳健型预期型,中西部地区城市房价泡沫则主要属于弱稳健型预期型。     

Determining aggregated expectations of future outcomes

This article describes a package of new research techniques that have been developed to allow investigation of long-term global trends. It is based on the theory that expectations (of managers) intimately effect the macro-outcomes of aggregated individual actions. A knowledge of these expectations may be used as a guide to their future actions, and hence to future outcomes overall. To allow this knowledge to be obtained, the qualitative techniques—a combination of focus groups with scenario forecasting—were developed as part of a program of research lasting more than half a decade, and tested against 17 groups consisting of managers from 140 organizations. Subsequent quantitative work, using semantic differentials to map the importance of the 162 dimensions discovered at the qualitative stage, has initially been tested by a survey with respondents from more than 150 organizations.     

Was the deflation of the depression anticipated? An inference using real-time data

Theories that explain the behavior of the economy during the Depression are based on assumptions about agents’ expectations about future price trends. This paper uses an alternative methodological approach which utilizes real-time information from the Depression period to infer whether deflation was anticipated. The information includes the forecasting methodology of that time as well as projections about anticipated output that were obtained from the textual analysis of business statements, converting qualitative to quantitative data. We infer that deflation was not anticipated because agents did not expect economic output to consistently decrease.     

Impact of official forecasts on private expectations: The paradox of manipulation (The French Case: 1965–1982)

Official forecasts may be considered as an attempt to condition the state of opinion. Still the credibility of economic policy is a sine qua non condition for a successful annoncement effect. A quantitative analysis of government manipulation on price expectations outlines a paradox. A government with high political support can manipulate the private expectations but it usually doesn't need to, since its high popularity is a result of a satisfactory state of economy. Manipulation interests a government with low popularity but it is not efficient since individuals prefer private forecasts or an naive extrapolative process to form their price expectations.     

北京市房地产泡沫状况与成因分析

对北京市房地产开发投资、固定资产投资、商品房销售情况进行量化分析,并计算地价与GDP、物价增长率的相关指标,据此分析北京市房地产市场的经济波动状况以及泡沫情况,并从价格预期、土地稀缺性、流动性膨胀、银行信贷非理性膨胀、税收政策几个方面对影响泡沫形成的因素进行分析,为相关市场参与者提供相关依据。     

Rational Expectations and the Defris-Williams Inflationary Expectations Series*

This paper evaluates the Defris-Williams inflationary expectations series as a measure of rational expectations for the period 1973(1) to 1980(2). The results show that the series violates the rationality criterion, being an inefficient and biased predictor of inflation. By constructing an ‘information-augmented’ D-W series, the quantitative importance of omitted information available to consumers at the time of making their forecasts is isolated. The key omitted economic variables are found to be lagged monetary growth and unemployment or an indexation dummy which explains 70 percent of the forecast error of the D-W series. These results suggest that a theoretically constructed expectations series may prove to be a superior measure of market expectations of inflation in Australia.     

我国粮食价格与CPI关系研究

本文利用1998年1月-2010年10月的月度CPI数据和粮食批发价格指数对粮食价格和CPI的关系进行了定性和定量分析。实证结果表明,两者之间存在长期和短期关系,从长期来看,粮食价格每上涨1%会使CPI上涨0.336%;从短期来看,粮价对CPI有滞后1期的影响,CPI对粮价有滞后3期的影响。综合考虑影响粮食价格的国际效应、供给效应、市场预期效应和政策效应,未来几个月我国粮价将有所上涨,但涨幅不会很大。     

Inflation Expectations, Interest Rates and Arbitrary Income Transfers

Unexpected inflation, disinflation or deflation cause arbitrary income transfers between an economy's borrowers and lenders. This redistribution results from distorted real interest rates that are too high when price level changes are over‐predicted and too low when they are under‐predicted. This article shows that in Australia's case, inflation expectations were mostly biased upwards throughout the 1990s, according to the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research series and to a new derived series based on bond yields, implying that real interest rates were too high over this time. In turn, this caused substantial arbitrary income transfers from debtors to creditors, estimated to have averaged up to 3 per cent of gross domestic product over the period.     

Rational Expectations is not Generally Valid for Econometric Models: Evidence from Stock Market Data

In applying the rational expectations hypothesis to generate expectations in an econometric model it is assumed that (1) the model itself is capable of generating reasonable forecasts of all required expectations variables included in the model, and that (2) the economic agents whose behavior is being modeled act as if they form their psychological expectations as conditional mathematical expectations generated by the model. Both assumptions can be invalid, as demonstrated by the historical data on Hong Kong stock prices and by the successful application of the adaptive expectations hypothesis to explain panel data of prices of individual stocks and aggregate time series data on stock price indices of the United States and of Hong Kong.     

Price instability in a rational expectations model: The mexican case

The purpose of this paper was twofold: (1) to develop an open-economy-rational-expectations model to test the theoretical relationship between the price level and expectations about money and the exchange rate; and (2) based on the empirical results of the model, prescribe policy rules aimed at stabilizing inflationary expectations in Mexico. The major empirical findings were that the price formation in Mexico is positively related to both subjective money and exchange-rate expectations formed at period t. The correction path suggested by the empirical results is the implementation of an “activist” policy aimed at reducing both the ratio of real fiscal deficit and external debt to real gross domestic product from their current levels to the “ideal” levels of 1.6 and 11.3 percent of GDP, respectively.     

Observed expectations,news shocks,and the business cycle

This paper exploits information from the term structure of survey expectations to identify news shocks in a DSGE model with rational expectations.We estimate a structural business-cycle model with price and wage stickiness. We allow for both unanticipated and anticipated components (“news”) in each structural disturbance: neutral and investment-specific technology shocks, government spending shocks, risk premium, price and wage markup shocks, and monetary policy shocks.We show that the estimation of a standard DSGE model with realized data obfuscates the identification of news shocks and yields weakly or non-identified parameters pertaining to such shocks. The identification of news shocks greatly improves when we re-estimate the model using data on observed expectations regarding future output, consumption, investment, government spending, inflation, and interest rates - at horizons ranging from one-period to five-periods ahead.The news series thus obtained largely differ from their counterparts that are estimated using only data on realized variables. Moreover, the results suggest that the identified news shocks explain a sizable portion of aggregate fluctuations. News about investment-specific technology and risk premium shocks play the largest role, followed by news about labor supply (wage markup) and monetary policy.     

Dynamic demand and noncompetitive pricing strategies

This paper studies optimal noncompetitive pricing strategies when the evolution of demand is the result of intertemporal considerations. Two different hypotheses of price expectations (myopia and perfect foresight) are treated. The major implication is that the slight modification from an instantaneous to a very fast consumer reaction may completely modify a monopolist's price strategy. More precisely, the price strategy should be volatile if the equilibrium demand is convex, independent whether the consumers act myopically or employ rational expectations. On the other hand, asynchronous dynamics (e.g., due to competitive fringe supply or different segments of demand) cannot explain even damped price oscillations. The equilibrium price strategy of the noncompetitive supplier exceeds the static rule if consumers employ myopic expectations; rational expectations may lead to prices above or below the static rule depending on the rate of discount.I am grateful for the helpful and elaborate comments from three anonymous referees.     

A model of trade and growth for the developing world

This paper describes structure, assumptions and projection results of the SIMLINK model. The purpose of this modelistosimulate the trade linkages between the developed and developing world. By taking the growth expectations of the OECD countries and the price of petroleum as a starting point, the model estimates the price and volume of a series of commodities important in LDC exports. The export earnings for seven LDC regions are estimated from the commodity projections, and combined with a predetermined estimate of capital inflows to calculate import capacity. A simple growth model for each region then determines the import constrained growth rate for that region.     

Beauty contest,bounded rationality,and sentiment pricing dynamics

We present a dynamic asset pricing model that incorporates investor sentiment, bounded rationality and higher-order expectations to study how these factors affect asset pricing equilibrium. In the model, we utilize a two-period trading market and investors make decisions based on the heterogeneous expectations principle and the “sparsity-based bounded rational” sentiment. We find that bounded rationality results in mispricing and reduces it in next period. Investor sentiment produces more significant effects than private signals, optimistic investor sentiment increases hedging demand, thus causing prices to soar. Higher-order investors are more rational and attentive to the strategies of other participants rather than private signals. This model also derives the dampening effect of higher-order expectations to price volatility and the heterogeneity expectation depicts inconsistent investor behavior in financial markets. In the model, investors' expectations about future price is distorted by their sentiment and bounded rationality, so they obtain a biased mean from the signal extraction.     

Modelling the dynamics of European carbon futures price: A Zipf analysis

This article investigates the European carbon futures price dynamics by applying the Zipf analysis. The results show that: first, carbon price behaviour is asymmetric, and the long-term bearish probability is greater than the long-term bullish probability. Second, time-scales of investment and speculators' expectations of returns have dual effects on carbon price behaviour. The longer the time-scales of investment, the higher the bearish probability. The lower the expectations of returns, the smaller the distortion of carbon price behaviour. Third, the differences in carbon market cognitions from non-greedy speculators with different expectations of returns mainly lie in the amplitudes and occasions of carbon price fluctuations, rather than in the carbon price fluctuations themselves. Fourth, speculators' expectations of returns have critical points. Once the critical points are reached, they will no longer be able to distort carbon price behaviour. Finally, we discuss some investment advice for supports of the decision-makers. For non-greedy-type speculators, they will choose to hold negatively in the short term and buy and hold in the long term, while for greedy-type speculators they will sell their European Union Allowances (EUAs) in the short term, and buy and hold in the long term. The results are helpful to hedge against unwanted carbon price movements, and to understand the transactions between different types of agents.     

A two-period model of the competitive socialist labor-managed firm

This paper investigates the role of price expectations in the short-run supply response of the competitive socialist labor-managed firm. The insights gained from the analysis of the two-period model presented in this paper are used to clarify the role of price expectations in the literature on labor-managed firms. It is found that the type of price expectation assumption, made implicitly or explicitly, affects the slope of the firm's short-run supply curve.     

Modifying Taylor reaction functions in the presence of the zero‐lower‐bound — Evidence for the ECB and the Fed

We propose an alternative way of estimating Taylor reaction functions if the zero‐lower bound on nominal interest rates is binding. This approach relies on tackling the real rather than the nominal interest rate. So if the nominal rate is (close to) zero central banks can influence the inflation expectations via quantitative easing. The unobservable inflation expectations are estimated with a state‐space model that additionally generates a time varying series for the equilibrium real interest rate and the potential output — both needed for estimations of Taylor reaction functions. We test our approach for the ECB and the Fed within the recent crisis. We add other explanatory variables to this modified Taylor reaction function and show that there are substantial differences between the estimated reaction coefficients in the pre‐ and crisis era for both central banks. While the central banks on both sides of the Atlantic act less inertially, put a smaller weight on the inflation gap, money growth and the risk spread, the response to asset price inflation becomes more pronounced during the crisis. However, the central banks diverge in their response to the output gap and credit growth.     

Copper Price Behaviour and the London Metal Exchange

This paper examines how variables which describe the expectations of consumers can contribute to the explanation of observed expenditure patterns and how measured series of such expectations can be used in a forecasting model to improve the prediction of short-term consumer expenditures. The expectations data are based on the British Market Research Bureau's Financial Expectations Survey and the respective series that are derived are tested in correlation and regression exercises against quarterly aggregate consumer expenditure series. The exercise finds that the information contained in these financial expectations has significant value for predicting expenditures in the period 1 to 12 months ahead. The forecasting models based on the expectational data generally perform as well as those based on conventional economic variables and the leading indicator properties of the expectations, combined with their rapid availability, enhance their value as a potential source of forecasting information.