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Expectations formation and stability of large socioeconomic systems

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  • GRANDMONT, Jean-Michel

    (CNRS and CREST,Malakoff, France)

Abstract

This paper attemps to identify, in a framework deliberately stripped of unnecessary technical- ities, some of the basic reasons why adaptive learning may or may not lead to stability and convergence to self-fulfilling expectations in large socioeconomic systems where no agent, or collection of agents, can act to manipulate macroeconomic outcomes. It is shown that if agents are somewhat uncertain about the local stability of the system, and are accordingly ready to extrapolate a large range of regularities (trends) that may show up in past small deviations from equilibrium, including divergent ones, the learning dynamics is locally divergent. On the other hand, if agents are fairly sure of the local stability of the system, and extrapolate only convergent trends out of small past deviations from equilibrium, one may get local stability. This “uncertainty principle” does show up in a wide variety of contexts: smooth or discontin- uous, finite or infinite memory learning rules, error learning, recursive least squares, Bayesian learning.

Suggested Citation

  • GRANDMONT, Jean-Michel, 1997. "Expectations formation and stability of large socioeconomic systems," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 1997088, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
  • Handle: RePEc:cor:louvco:1997088
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Learning dynamics; convergence to rational expectations; error learning; least squares learning; Bayesian learning;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E10 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - General
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations

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