Expectations with Endogenous Information Acquisition: An Experimental Investigation

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Fuster, Andreas; Perez-Truglia, Ricardo; Wiederholt, Mirko; Zafar, Basit
• 署名单位: Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain; Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne; Swiss Finance Institute (SFI); University of California System; University of California Berkeley; Institut d'Etudes Politiques Paris (Sciences Po); University of Michigan System; University of Michigan
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6535
• DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_00994
• 发表日期: 2022-09
• 页码: 1059-1078
• 关键词: willingness-to-pay; inflation-expectations; sticky prices; DISAGREEMENT; preferences

摘要

We use a survey experiment to generate direct evidence on how people acquire and process information. Participants can buy different information signals that could help them forecast future national home prices. We elicit their valuations and exogenously vary the cost of information. Participants put substantial value on their preferred signal and, when acquired, incorporate the signal in their beliefs. However, they disagree on which signal to buy. As a result, making information cheaper does not decrease the cross-sectional dispersion of expectations. We provide a model with costly acquisition and processing of information, which can match most of our empirical results.