% WARNING: This file may contain UTF-8 (unicode) characters.
% While non-8-bit characters are officially unsupported in BibTeX, you
% can use them with the biber backend of biblatex
%    usepackage[backend=biber]{biblatex}

@techreport{NBERw17301,
 title = "Natural Expectations, Macroeconomic Dynamics, and Asset Pricing",
 author = "Fuster, Andreas and Hebert, Benjamin and Laibson, David",
 institution = "National Bureau of Economic Research",
 type = "Working Paper",
 series = "Working Paper Series",
 number = "17301",
 year = "2011",
 month = "August",
 doi = {10.3386/w17301},
 URL = "http://www.nber.org/papers/w17301",
 abstract = {How does an economy behave if (1) fundamentals are truly hump-shaped, exhibiting momentum in the short run and partial mean reversion in the long run, and (2) agents do not know that fundamentals are hump-shaped and base their beliefs on parsimonious models that they fit to the available data? A class of parsimonious models leads to qualitatively similar biases and generates empirically observed patterns in asset prices and macroeconomic dynamics. First, parsimonious models will robustly pick up the short-term momentum in fundamentals but will generally fail to fully capture the long-run mean reversion. Beliefs will therefore be characterized by endogenous extrapolation bias and pro-cyclical excess optimism. Second, asset prices will be highly volatile and exhibit partial mean reversion--i.e., overreaction. Excess returns will be negatively predicted by lagged excess returns, P/E ratios, and consumption growth. Third, real economic activity will have amplified cycles. For example, consumption growth will be negatively auto-correlated in the medium run. Fourth, the equity premium will be large. Agents will perceive that equities are very risky when in fact long-run equity returns will co-vary only weakly with long-run consumption growth. If agents had rational expectations, the equity premium would be close to zero. Fifth, sophisticated agents--i.e., those who are assumed to know the true model--will hold far more equity than investors who use parsimonious models. Moreover, sophisticated agents will follow a counter-cyclical asset allocation policy. These predicted effects are qualitatively confirmed in U.S. data.},
}