Essays in Empirical Expectations
Author
Summary, in English
This thesis investigates survey expectations from the Economic Tendency Survey for households, provided by the Swedish National Institute of Economic Research, for the years 1995-2011. The first chapter relates a part of the research literature to the overall purpose of the thesis, which is to investigate rational properties of empirical expectations. The second chapter presents the results of conventional linear tests of properties under the null of the Rational Expectations Hypothesis for different groups. Results conform to bad measures of inflation expectations and indicate that groups form expectations non-rationally. The third chapter presents the effects of the Swedish Riksbank’s repo rate press releases and adhering monetary policy reports on inflation expectations, which are asymmetric, significant, robust and non-persistent. The fourth chapter revisits stylized facts regarding entrepreneurs’ alleged irrational optimism, by using their 12 month expectations on the state of the Swedish economy as a proxy for optimism. We interpret the robust results as support for the argument that entrepreneurs have less of an optimism bias than non-entrepreneurs have a pessimism bias.
Department/s
Publishing year
2014
Language
English
Publication/Series
Lund Economic Studies
Document type
Dissertation
Publisher
Department of Economics, Lund University
Topic
- Economics
Keywords
- Survey
- Inflation
- Expectations
- Entrepreneur
- Information
- Communication
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0460-0029
Defence date
19 September 2014
Defence time
10:15
Defence place
Holger Craaford Centre EC3:211
Opponent
- Lisbeth LaCour (Professor)