Abstract
A large amount of contemporary macroeconomic and finance literature is dominated by the assumption of rational expectations — where the expectations of agents are considered not to be significantly different from optimal forecasts made from a set containing all available and relevant information. The concept of agents’ expectations being equivalent to optimal forecasts dates back to Muth (1960, 1961) and it is now well known that when combined with the natural rate hypothesis, this idea leads to dramatic conclusions in macroeconomic models; such as the deterministic part of monetary policy having no effect on real output or employment in the economy, for example, Lucas (1972) and Sargent and Wallace (1975).
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© 1987 The Money Study Group
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Baillie, R.T., McMahon, P.C. (1987). Rational Forecasts in Models of the Term Structure of Interest Rates. In: Goodhart, C., Currie, D., Llewellyn, D.T. (eds) The Operation and Regulation of Financial Markets. Studies in Monetary Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09287-1_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09287-1_8
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