[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cer/papers/wp441.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Discrete Actions in Information-Constrained Tracking Problems

Author

Listed:
  • Filip Matejka
  • Christopher A. Sims
Abstract
Optimal actions of an agent facing a Shannon capacity constraint on the translation of an uncertain signal into an action can easily turn out to be discretely distributed, even when the objective function and the initial distribution of uncertainty contain no discrete elements. We show this result analytically in a broad class of cases. It has implications for the interpretation of observed intervals between changes in prices or other economic choice variables in micro-data as indicators of costs of adjustment or of the degree of “stickiness” in responses to aggregate policy changes or business cycle fluctuations.

Suggested Citation

  • Filip Matejka & Christopher A. Sims, 2011. "Discrete Actions in Information-Constrained Tracking Problems," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp441, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    • Handle: RePEc:cer:papers:wp441
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cerge-ei.cz/pdf/wp/Wp441.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martin Eichenbaum & Nir Jaimovich & Sergio Rebelo, 2008. "Reference Prices and Nominal Rigidities," NBER Working Papers 13829, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Sims, Christopher A., 2003. "Implications of rational inattention," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 665-690, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Etienne Gagnon & David López-Salido & Nicolas Vincent, 2013. "Individual Price Adjustment along the Extensive Margin," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(1), pages 235-281.
    2. Kacperczyk, Marcin & Nosal, Jaromir & Stevens, Luminita, 2019. "Investor sophistication and capital income inequality," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 18-31.
    3. Silvia Miranda-Agrippino & Giovanni Ricco, 2021. "The Transmission of Monetary Policy Shocks," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(3), pages 74-107, July.
    4. Luigi Paciello, 2012. "Monetary Policy and Price Responsiveness to Aggregate Shocks under Rational Inattention," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44(7), pages 1375-1399, October.
    5. Yulei Luo & Eric R. Young, 2016. "Long‐Run Consumption Risk and Asset Allocation under Recursive Utility and Rational Inattention," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 48(2-3), pages 325-362, March.
    6. Altantsetseg Batchuluun & Yulei Luo & Eric R. Young, 2019. "Portfolio Choice with Information-Processing Limits," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 20(1), pages 137-162, May.
    7. Andrew Caplin & John Leahy & Filip Matějka, 2015. "Social Learning and Selective Attention," NBER Working Papers 21001, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Saint-Paul, Gilles, 2010. "A "quantum" approach to rational inattention," CEPR Discussion Papers 7739, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Antonella Tutino, 2013. "Rationally inattentive consumption choices," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 16(3), pages 421-439, July.
    10. Jonathan A. Parker & Nicholas S. Souleles & David S. Johnson & Robert McClelland, 2013. "Consumer Spending and the Economic Stimulus Payments of 2008," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(6), pages 2530-2553, October.
    11. Gaetano Gaballo, 2016. "Rational Inattention to News: The Perils of Forward Guidance," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(1), pages 42-97, January.
    12. Vojtech Bartos & Michal Bauer & Julie Chytilova & Filip Matejka, 2013. "Attention Discrimination: Theory and Field Experiments," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp499, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    13. Angeletos, G.-M. & Lian, C., 2016. "Incomplete Information in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1065-1240, Elsevier.
    14. George-Marios Angeletos & Chen Lian, 2016. "Incomplete Information in Macroeconomics: Accommodating Frictions in Coordination," NBER Working Papers 22297, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Tim Willems, 2017. "Actively Learning by Pricing: A Model of an Experimenting Seller," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(604), pages 2216-2239, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Etienne Gagnon & David López-Salido & Nicolas Vincent, 2013. "Individual Price Adjustment along the Extensive Margin," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(1), pages 235-281.
    2. Pasten, Ernesto & Schoenle, Raphael, 2016. "Rational inattention, multi-product firms and the neutrality of money," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 1-16.
    3. Chen, Haipeng (Allan) & Levy, Daniel & Ray, Sourav & Bergen, Mark, 2008. "Asymmetric Price Adjustment in the Small," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 55(4), pages 728-737.
    4. David Altig & Lawrence Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Jesper Linde, 2011. "Firm-Specific Capital, Nominal Rigidities and the Business Cycle," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 14(2), pages 225-247, April.
    5. Costain, James & Nakov, Anton, 2015. "Precautionary price stickiness," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 218-234.
    6. Pete Klenow, 2009. "EconomicDynamics Interviews Pete Klenow on Price Rigidity," EconomicDynamics Newsletter, Review of Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(1), November.
    7. Xavier Gabaix, 2014. "A Sparsity-Based Model of Bounded Rationality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(4), pages 1661-1710.
    8. Daniel Levy & Dongwon Lee & Haipeng (Allan) Chen & Robert J. Kauffman & Mark Bergen, 2011. "Price Points and Price Rigidity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(4), pages 1417-1431, November.
    9. David Altig & Lawrence Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Jesper Linde, 2011. "Firm-Specific Capital, Nominal Rigidities and the Business Cycle," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 14(2), pages 225-247, April.
    10. Martin Eichenbaum & Nir Jaimovich & Sergio Rebelo & Josephine Smith, 2014. "How Frequent Are Small Price Changes?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 137-155, April.
    11. Saint-Paul, Gilles, 2017. "A “quantized” approach to rational inattention," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 50-71.
    12. Hellwig, Christian & Venkateswaran, Venky, 2009. "Setting the right prices for the wrong reasons," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(S), pages 57-77.
    13. Woodford, Michael, 2009. "Information-constrained state-dependent pricing," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(S), pages 100-124.
    14. Tim Willems, 2017. "Actively Learning by Pricing: A Model of an Experimenting Seller," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(604), pages 2216-2239, September.
    15. Bartosz Mackowiak & Frank Smets, 2008. "On implications of micro price data for macro models," Conference Series ; [Proceedings], Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    16. Matějka, Filip, 2015. "Rigid pricing and rationally inattentive consumer," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 158(PB), pages 656-678.
    17. Jean Boivin & Robert Clark & Nicolas Vincent, 2010. "Virtual Borders: Online Nominal Rigidities and International Market Segmentation," NBER Working Papers 15642, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Filip Matejka, 2011. "Rigid Pricing and Rationally Inattentive," 2011 Meeting Papers 749, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    19. Persson, Petra, 2018. "Attention manipulation and information overload," Behavioural Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(1), pages 78-106, May.
    20. Kurt Lewis, 2009. "The Two-Period Rational Inattention Model: Accelerations and Analyses," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 33(1), pages 79-97, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    rational inattention; adjustment frictions; sticky prices;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cer:papers:wp441. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lucie Vasiljevova (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eiacacz.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.