Coordination of expectations in a Learning-to-Forecast Experiment

Abstract

The development of many aspects or economic variables are affected by the expectations that economic agents have in the markets regarding the development of these variables in the future. In this paper, we show that market behavior depends to a large extent on whether market prices respond positively or negatively to price expectations. In the case of treatment of negative feedback expectations, the prices converge quickly to their fundamental value. This confirms the hypothesis of rational expectations, as it happens in commodity markets. In the case of treatment of positive feedback expectations, the prices have large deviations from the fundamental value. This confirms irrational expectations, as it happens in the financial markets. Therefore, we study individual predictions to see how they react in each kind of feedback of expectations.