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Working Paper
Testing near-rationality using detailed survey data
This paper considers the evidence of ?near-rationality,? as described by Akerlof, Dickens, and Perry (2000). Using detailed surveys of household inflation expectations for the United States and Sweden, we find that the data are generally unsupportive of the near-rationality hypothesis. However, we document that household inflation expectations tend to settle around discrete and largely fixed ?focal points,? suggesting that both U.S. and Swedish households gauge inflation prospects in rather broad, qualitative terms. Moreover, the combination of a low-inflation environment and an inflation ...