Expectations

pp. 96-119

in: Roger Koppl, Big players and the economic theory of expectations, Berlin, Springer, 2002

Abstract

Expectations depend on institutions. As I indicated in Chapter 1, expectations will be more prescient in some institutional environments than in others. Stable environments tend to produce prescient expectations. Instability reduces the reliability of economic expectations. This point is the central result of the theory of Big Players. It is also a statement about learning in the market process. Expectations depend on institutions because institutions influence, in Hayek's words, "the process by which individual knowledge is changed" (1937, p. 45).