Learning from Prices: Public Communication and Welfare

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Amador, Manuel; Weill, Pierre-Olivier
• 署名单位: Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of California System; University of California Los Angeles
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-3808
• DOI: 10.1086/657923
• 发表日期: 2010
• 页码: 866-907
• 关键词: social value; INFORMATION; expectations; aggregation; POLICY

摘要

We study the effect of releasing public information about productivity or monetary shocks using a micro-founded macroeconomic model in which agents learn from the distribution of nominal prices. While a public release has the direct beneficial effect of providing new information, it also has the indirect adverse effect of reducing the informational efficiency of the price system. We show that the negative indirect effect can dominate. Thus, the public information release may increase uncertainty about the monetary shock and reduce welfare. We find that the optimal communication policy is always to release either all or none of the information.