Expectational Stability in a News-Driven Business Cycle Model

Brian Dombeck (University of Oregon) presented Zhang (2014), an unpublished manuscript exploring the stability properties of rational expectations equilibrium in the well-known expectationally driven business cycle model of Jaimovich and Rebelo (2009). The abstract is below, and a link to the paper is here.

Abstract:  This paper investigates the stability properties of Jaimovich and Rebelo (2009)’s news-driven business cycle model. In doing so, this paper adopts expectational stability (“E-stability”) as a natural criterion for rationality: plausible equilibria should arise from an adaptive learning formulation where agents form forecasts from a correctly specified model whose parameters are updated in real time. In examining the model’s stability properties, I find that when agents do not observe current state  variables when forming expectations, the rational expectations equilibrium (REE) is not learnable for some parameter values capable of generating news-driven recessions. However, stronger informational assumptions regarding the timing of expectations and outcomes can facilitate E-stability.