Four types of ignorance

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Hansen, Lars Peter; Sargent, Thomas J.
• 署名单位: New York University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF MONETARY ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3932
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jmoneco.2014.12.008
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 97-113
• 关键词: risk; uncertainty; Model Misspecification; Robustness; expected utility

摘要

This paper studies alternative ways of representing uncertainty about a law of motion in a version of a classic macroeconomic targetting problem of Milton Friedman (1953). We study both unstructured uncertainty - ignorance of the conditional distribution of the target next period as a function of states and controls - and more structured uncertainty - ignorance of the probability distribution of a response coefficient in an otherwise fully trusted specification of the conditional distribution of next period's target. We study whether and how different uncertainties affect Friedman's advice to be cautious in using a quantitative model to fine tune macroeconomic outcomes. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.