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Information Acquisition and Learning from Prices Over the Business Cycle

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Abstract

We study firms’ incentives to acquire costly information in booms and recessions to understand the role of endogenous information in explaining business cycles. We find that when the economy has been in a boom in the previous period, and firms enter the current period with an optimistic belief, the incentive to acquire information is weaker than when the economy has been in a recession and firms share a pessimistic belief. However, the price system, by transmitting information from informed to uninformed firms, dampens information demand and moderates the cyclicality of the aggregate learning outcome. Even though learning from equilibrium prices acts to stabilize fluctuations by discouraging information acquisition, it can be welfare-enhancing to make information prohibitively costly to obtain.

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  • Mäkinen, Taneli & Ohl, Björn, 2012. "Information Acquisition and Learning from Prices Over the Business Cycle," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 740, Stockholm School of Economics, revised 19 Mar 2013.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:hastef:0740
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    Cited by:

    1. Crowley, Patrick & Hughes Hallett, Andrew, 2014. "Volatility transfers between cycles: A theory of why the "great moderation" was more mirage than moderation," Research Discussion Papers 23/2014, Bank of Finland.
    2. Pavan, Alessandro & Vives, Xavier, 2015. "Information, Coordination, and Market Frictions: An Introduction," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 158(PB), pages 407-426.
    3. Gene Ambrocio, 2020. "Rational exuberance booms," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 35, pages 263-282, January.
    4. Benhabib, Jess & Liu, Xuewen & Wang, Pengfei, 2016. "Endogenous information acquisition and countercyclical uncertainty," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 601-642.
    5. Yu-Ting Chiang, 2022. "Attention and Fluctuations in Macroeconomic Uncertainty," Working Papers 2022-004, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised 09 Nov 2023.
    6. Wang, Yuanping & Wang, Dongfang & Hou, Chunxiao, 2022. "Information acquisition and asset allocation with unknown income growth," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    7. Gondhi, Naveen, 2023. "Rational inattention, misallocation, and the aggregate economy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 50-75.
    8. Marinko Škare & Saša Stjepanović, 2016. "Measuring Business Cycles: A Review," Contemporary Economics, University of Economics and Human Sciences in Warsaw., vol. 10(1), March.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    information acquisition; rational expectations equilibrium; asymmetric information; strategic substitutability;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D51 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Exchange and Production Economies
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles

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