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Do You Know that I Know that You Know…? Higher-Order Beliefs in Survey Data

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  • Olivier Coibion
  • Yuriy Gorodnichenko
  • Saten Kumar
  • Jane Ryngaert

Abstract

We implement a new survey of firms, focusing on their higher-order macroeconomic expectations. The survey provides a novel set of stylized facts regarding the relationship between first-order and higher-order expectations of economic agents, including how they adjust their beliefs in response to a variety of information treatments. We show how these facts can be used to calibrate key parameters of noisy-information models with infinite regress as well as to test predictions made by this class of models. We also consider a range of extensions to the basic noisy-information model that can potentially better reconcile theory and empirics. Although some extensions like level-k thinking are unsuccessful, incorporating heterogeneous long-run priors can address the empirical shortcomings of the basic noisy-information model.

Suggested Citation

  • Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Saten Kumar & Jane Ryngaert, 2021. "Do You Know that I Know that You Know…? Higher-Order Beliefs in Survey Data," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 136(3), pages 1387-1446.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:136:y:2021:i:3:p:1387-1446.
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