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Inattentive Producers

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  • Ricardo Reis

Abstract

I present and solve the problem of a producer who faces costs of acquiring, absorbing, and processing information. I establish a series of theoretical results describing the producer's behavior. First, I find the conditions under which she prefers to set a plan for the price she charges, or instead prefers to set a plan for the quantity she sells. Second, I show that the agent rationally chooses to be inattentive to news, only sporadically updating her information. I solve for the optimal length of inattentiveness and characterize its determinants. Third, I explicitly aggregate the behavior of many such producers. I apply these results to a model of inflation. I find that the model can fit the quantitative facts on post-war inflation remarkably well, that it is a good forecaster of future inflation, and that it survives the Lucas critique by fitting also the pre-war facts on inflation moderately well.

Suggested Citation

  • Ricardo Reis, 2005. "Inattentive Producers," NBER Working Papers 11820, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11820
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    JEL classification:

    • D92 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Intertemporal Firm Choice, Investment, Capacity, and Financing
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E20 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)

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