IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/hastef/0740.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Information Acquisition and Learning from Prices Over the Business Cycle

Author

Listed:

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.

Suggested Citation

  • 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
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://swopec.hhs.se/hastef/papers/hastef0740.pdf
    File Function: Complete Rendering
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nimark, Kristoffer, 2008. "Dynamic pricing and imperfect common knowledge," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 365-382, March.
    2. George-Marios Angeletos & Alessandro Pavan, 2004. "Transparency of Information and Coordination in Economies with Investment Complementarities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 91-98, May.
    3. Angeletos, George-Marios & La’O, Jennifer, 2009. "Incomplete information, higher-order beliefs and price inertia," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(S), pages 19-37.
    4. Alessandro Pavan, 2014. "Attention, Coordination, and Bounded Recall," Discussion Papers 1576, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    5. Manuel Amador & Pierre-Olivier Weill, 2010. "Learning from Prices: Public Communication and Welfare," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(5), pages 866-907.
    6. Moscarini, Giuseppe, 2004. "Limited information capacity as a source of inertia," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 28(10), pages 2003-2035, September.
    7. Bartosz Maćkowiak & Mirko Wiederholt, 2015. "Business Cycle Dynamics under Rational Inattention," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 82(4), pages 1502-1532.
    8. George-Marios Angeletos & Jennifer La'O, 2010. "Noisy Business Cycles," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2009, Volume 24, pages 319-378, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Jordan, J. S., 1985. "Learning rational expectations: The finite state case," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 257-276, August.
    10. N. Gregory Mankiw & Ricardo Reis, 2002. "Sticky Information versus Sticky Prices: A Proposal to Replace the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1295-1328.
    11. Hahm, Sangmoon, 1987. "Information acquisition in an incomplete information model of business cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 123-140, July.
    12. Bartosz Mackowiak & Mirko Wiederholt, 2009. "Optimal Sticky Prices under Rational Inattention," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 769-803, June.
    13. Grossman, Sanford J & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1980. "On the Impossibility of Informationally Efficient Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(3), pages 393-408, June.
    14. Radner, Roy, 1979. "Rational Expectations Equilibrium: Generic Existence and the Information Revealed by Prices," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(3), pages 655-678, May.
    15. Guido Lorenzoni, 2010. "Optimal Monetary Policy with Uncertain Fundamentals and Dispersed Information ," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 77(1), pages 305-338.
    16. Andini, Monica & de Blasio, Guido & Duranton, Gilles & Strange, William C., 2013. "Marshallian labour market pooling: Evidence from Italy," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(6), pages 1008-1022.
    17. Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh & Laura Veldkamp, 2009. "Information Immobility and the Home Bias Puzzle," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(3), pages 1187-1215, June.
    18. Xavier Vives, 1993. "How Fast do Rational Agents Learn?," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(2), pages 329-347.
    19. Xavier Vives, 2014. "On The Possibility Of Informationally Efficient Markets," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 12(5), pages 1200-1239, October.
    20. Hellwig, Martin F., 1980. "On the aggregation of information in competitive markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 477-498, June.
    21. Mankiw, N. Gregory & Reis, Ricardo, 2010. "Imperfect Information and Aggregate Supply," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: Benjamin M. Friedman & Michael Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 5, pages 183-229, Elsevier.
    22. Veronica Guerrieri & Peter Kondor, 2012. "Fund Managers, Career Concerns, and Asset Price Volatility," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(5), pages 1986-2017, August.
    23. Phelps, Edmund S, 1969. "The New Microeconomics in Inflation and Employment Theory," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 59(2), pages 147-160, May.
    24. Laura L. Veldkamp, 2011. "Information Choice in Macroeconomics and Finance," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9621.
    25. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2015. "Information Rigidity and the Expectations Formation Process: A Simple Framework and New Facts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(8), pages 2644-2678, August.
    26. Van Nieuwerburgh, Stijn & Veldkamp, Laura, 2006. "Learning asymmetries in real business cycles," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(4), pages 753-772, May.
    27. Hirshleifer, Jack, 1971. "The Private and Social Value of Information and the Reward to Inventive Activity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 61(4), pages 561-574, September.
    28. George-Marios Angeletos & Alessandro Pavan, 2007. "Efficient Use of Information and Social Value of Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(4), pages 1103-1142, July.
    29. Jeffery Amato & Hyun Shin, 2006. "Imperfect common knowledge and the information value of prices," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 27(1), pages 213-241, January.
    30. Lee, I.H. & Chalkley, M., 1994. "Asymmetric business cycles," Discussion Paper Series In Economics And Econometrics 9411, Economics Division, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton.
    31. Marcin Kacperczyk & Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh & Laura Veldkamp, 2014. "Time-Varying Fund Manager Skill," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(4), pages 1455-1484, August.
    32. Xavier Vives, 2007. "Information and Learning in Markets," Levine's Bibliography 122247000000001520, UCLA Department of Economics.
    33. Vives, Xavier, 1997. "Learning from Others: A Welfare Analysis," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 177-200, August.
    34. Barro, Robert J., 1976. "Rational expectations and the role of monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 1-32, January.
    35. Ricardo Reis, 2006. "Inattentive Producers," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(3), pages 793-821.
    36. Jordan, J. S., 1982. "A dynamic model of expectations equilibrium," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 235-254, December.
    37. Luca Colombo & Gianluca Femminis & Alessandro Pavan, 2014. "Information Acquisition and Welfare," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 81(4), pages 1438-1483.
    38. George-Marios Angeletos & Alessandro Pavan, 2007. "Socially Optimal Coordination: Characterization and Policy Implications," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 5(2-3), pages 585-593, 04-05.
    39. Verrecchia, Robert E, 1982. "Information Acquisition in a Noisy Rational Expectations Economy," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1415-1430, November.
    40. Jayant Vivek Ganguli & Liyan Yang, 2009. "Complementarities, Multiplicity, and Supply Information," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(1), pages 90-115, March.
    41. Sanford J. Grossman, 1981. "An Introduction to the Theory of Rational Expectations Under Asymmetric Information," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 48(4), pages 541-559.
    42. Amador, Manuel & Weill, Pierre-Olivier, 2012. "Learning from private and public observations of othersʼ actions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(3), pages 910-940.
    43. Lucas, Robert Jr., 1972. "Expectations and the neutrality of money," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 103-124, April.
    44. Wesley Clair Mitchell, 1927. "Business Cycles: The Problem and Its Setting," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number mitc27-1.
    45. Grossman, Sanford J & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1976. "Information and Competitive Price Systems," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 66(2), pages 246-253, May.
    46. Martin Chalkley & In Ho Lee, 1998. "Learning and Asymmetric Business Cycles," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 1(3), pages 623-645, July.
    47. Guillermo Ordoñez, 2009. "Larger crises, slower recoveries: the asymmetric effects of financial frictions," Staff Report 429, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    48. John G. Fernald, 2012. "A quarterly, utilization-adjusted series on total factor productivity," Working Paper Series 2012-19, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    49. Veldkamp, Laura L., 2005. "Slow boom, sudden crash," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 124(2), pages 230-257, October.
    50. Sims, Christopher A., 2003. "Implications of rational inattention," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 665-690, April.
    51. Stephen Morris & Hyun Song Shin, 2002. "Social Value of Public Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1521-1534, December.
    52. Sims, Christopher A., 2010. "Rational Inattention and Monetary Economics," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: Benjamin M. Friedman & Michael Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 4, pages 155-181, Elsevier.
    53. Townsend, Robert M, 1983. "Forecasting the Forecasts of Others," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(4), pages 546-588, August.
    54. Jean-Jacques Laffont, 1989. "The Economics of Uncertainty and Information," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262121360, April.
    55. Diamond, Douglas W. & Verrecchia, Robert E., 1981. "Information aggregation in a noisy rational expectations economy," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 221-235, September.
    56. Guido Lorenzoni, 2009. "A Theory of Demand Shocks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 2050-2084, December.
    57. Admati, Anat R, 1985. "A Noisy Rational Expectations Equilibrium for Multi-asset Securities Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(3), pages 629-657, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marinko Škare & Saša Stjepanović, 2016. "Measuring Business Cycles: A Review," Contemporary Economics, University of Economics and Human Sciences in Warsaw., vol. 10(1), March.
    2. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2014_023 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Benhabib, Jess & Liu, Xuewen & Wang, Pengfei, 2016. "Endogenous information acquisition and countercyclical uncertainty," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 601-642.
    4. Gondhi, Naveen, 2023. "Rational inattention, misallocation, and the aggregate economy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 50-75.
    5. 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.
    6. Pavan, Alessandro & Vives, Xavier, 2015. "Information, Coordination, and Market Frictions: An Introduction," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 158(PB), pages 407-426.
    7. Gene Ambrocio, 2020. "Rational exuberance booms," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 35, pages 263-282, January.
    8. Yu-Ting Chiang, 2022. "Attention and Fluctuations in Macroeconomic Uncertainty," Working Papers 2022-004, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised 09 Nov 2023.
    9. Wang, Yuanping & Wang, Dongfang & Hou, Chunxiao, 2022. "Information acquisition and asset allocation with unknown income growth," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Angeletos, G.-M. & Lian, C., 2016. "Incomplete Information in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1065-1240, Elsevier.
    2. Mäkinen, Taneli & Ohl, Björn, 2015. "Information acquisition and learning from prices over the business cycle," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 158(PB), pages 585-633.
    3. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2014_007 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Pavan, Alessandro & Vives, Xavier, 2015. "Information, Coordination, and Market Frictions: An Introduction," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 158(PB), pages 407-426.
    5. George-Marios Angeletos & Chen Lian, 2016. "Incomplete Information in Macroeconomics: Accommodating Frictions in Coordination," NBER Working Papers 22297, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Angeletos, George-Marios & Iovino, Luigi & La'O, Jennifer, 2020. "Learning over the business cycle: Policy implications," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    7. Angeletos, George-Marios & La’O, Jennifer, 2009. "Incomplete information, higher-order beliefs and price inertia," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(S), pages 19-37.
    8. George-Marios Angeletos, 2018. "Frictional Coordination," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 16(3), pages 563-603.
    9. Bartosz Maćkowiak & Filip Matějka & Mirko Wiederholt, 2023. "Rational Inattention: A Review," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(1), pages 226-273, March.
    10. Guido Lorenzoni, 2009. "A Theory of Demand Shocks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 2050-2084, December.
    11. Leonardo Melosi, 2017. "Signalling Effects of Monetary Policy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 84(2), pages 853-884.
    12. George-Marios Angeletos & Jennifer La'O, 2010. "Noisy Business Cycles," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2009, Volume 24, pages 319-378, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. George-Marios Angeletos & Chen Lian, 2018. "Forward Guidance without Common Knowledge," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(9), pages 2477-2512, September.
    14. Benhima, Kenza, 2019. "Booms and busts with dispersed information," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 32-47.
    15. Alexandre Kohlhas, 2018. "Asymmetric Attention," 2018 Meeting Papers 1040, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    16. Benigno, Pierpaolo & Karantounias, Anastasios G., 2019. "Overconfidence, subjective perception and pricing behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 107-132.
    17. Blankespoor, Elizabeth & deHaan, Ed & Marinovic, Iván, 2020. "Disclosure processing costs, investors’ information choice, and equity market outcomes: A review," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2).
    18. Kohlhas, Alexandre N., 2020. "An informational rationale for action over disclosure," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    19. Michael Rousakis, 2013. "Expectations and Fluctuations: The Role of Monetary Policy," 2013 Meeting Papers 681, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    20. George-Marios Angeletos & Alessandro Pavan, 2009. "Policy with Dispersed Information," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(1), pages 11-60, March.
    21. Candian, Giacomo, 2019. "Information frictions and real exchange rate dynamics," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 189-205.

    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

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:hastef:0740. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Helena Lundin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/erhhsse.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.