Suchergebnisse

In principle, money illusion could explain the inertial adjustment of prices after changes of monetary policy. Hence, money illusion could provide an explanation of monetary non-neutrality. However, this explanation has been thoroughly discredited in modern economics. As a consequence, economists have ever since the 1970s searched for alternative explanations for nominal rigidity. These explanations are all based on the assumption of fully rational economic agents, holding rational expectations. This book argues that money illusion has been prematurely dismissed as an explanation of monetary non-neutrality. Methods of experimental economics are used to investigate the real aggregate effects of money illusion. It is shown that money illusion in fact causes (short-run) real income effects if strategic complementarity prevails. Strategic complementarity is an important characteristic of naturally occurring macroeconomies and is a recurrent theme in most models explaining nominal rigidity

This paper studies, theoretically and experimentally, the effects of overconfidence and fake news on information aggregation and the quality of democratic choice in a common-interest setting. We theoretically show that overconfidence exacerbates the adverse effects of widespread misinformation (i.e., fake news). We then analyze richer models that allow for partisanship, targeted misinformation intended to sway public opinion, and news signals correlated across voters (due to media ownership concentration or censorship). In our experiment, overconfidence severely undermines information aggregation, suggesting that the effect of overconfidence can be much more pronounced at the collective than at the individual level. (JEL C91, D12, D72, D82, D83, L82)

The data in Fehr and Tyran (2001) and Petersen and Winn (2014) show that money illusion plays an important role in nominal price adjustment after a fully anticipated negative monetary shock. Money illusion affects subjects' expectations, and causes pronounced nominal inertia after a negative shock but much less inertia after a positive shock. Thus Petersen and Winn (2014) provide a misleading interpretation of both our and their own data. (JEL C92, D83, D84, E31, E32, E52)