Empirical evidence on the rational expectations hypothesis using reported expectations

On rationality of business expectations: A micro analysis of qualitative responses

“…E.g., Pesando (1975), Mullineaux (1978Mullineaux ( , 1980 and Noble and Fields (1982) provide some support for rationality. An extensive study for different countries has been done by Aiginger (1982), who also surveyed previous work.…”

“…Important contributions have been recently made by Pesando (1975), Carlson (1977), Mullineaux (1978Mullineaux ( , 1980, Friedman (1980), Noble and Fields (1982), Figlewski and Wachtel (1981), de Leeuw and McKelvey (1981), and Aiginger (1982), among others. This paper differs from previous studies in that the data (collected by the IfoInstitut, Munich) are qualitative monthly survey responses by individual manufacturing firms to questions concerning their own expected and current business conditions.…”

Rational Expectations

“…Benjamin Friedman (1 980) for example tested the interest rate expectations of a number of money market professionals and found that they revealed both biasedness and inefficiency. A useful survey of various direct tests of rational expectations can be found in Aiginger (1980) which also tends to be lukewarm in its conclusions with respect to rationality. Rational expectations theorists, however, tend to treat the results of survey data with a good deal of scepticism and question whether reported expectations accurately reflect actual behaviour.…”