The essays in Energy, Foresight and Strategy apply rational expectation theory to various energy markets with the intention of discussing issues relevant to analysis and decision making in the whole of the energy field. Originally published in 1985, issues explored include oil exportation, energy prices and embargoes, both focussing on how past regulation has created issues in the market at the time of publication as well as creating models to ascertain the futures of various energy resources. This title will be of interest to students of Environmental Studies and Economics.

The essays in Energy, Foresight and Strategy apply rational expectation theory to various energy markets with the intention of discussing issues relevant to analysis and decision making in the whole of the energy field. Originally published in 1985, issues explored include oil exportation, energy prices and embargoes, both focussing on how past regulation has created issues in the market at the time of publication as well as creating models to ascertain the futures of various energy resources. This title will be of interest to students of Environmental Studies and Economics.

"Macroeconomic Theory," in its first edition, was widely adopted for use as a graduate text; this updated and expanded version should find even greater popularity as a text and as a research reference. It has been substantially revised to include three entirely new chapters: The Consumption Function, Government Debt and Taxes, and Dynamic Optimal Taxation. Significant additions have been made to three of the original chapters dealing with difference equations, stochastic difference equations, and investment under uncertainty.

This collection of essays uses the lens of rational expectations theory to examine how governments anticipate and plan for inflation, and provides insight into the pioneering research for which Thomas Sargent was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in economics. Rational expectations theory is based on the simple premise that people will use all the information available to them in making economic decisions, yet applying the theory to macroeconomics and econometrics is technically demanding. Here, Sargent engages with practical problems in economics in a less formal, noneconometric way, demonstrating how rational expectations can satisfactorily interpret a range of historical and contemporary events. He focuses on periods of actual or threatened depreciation in the value of a nation's currency. Drawing on historical attempts to counter inflation, from the French Revolution and the aftermath of World War I to the economic policies of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, Sargent finds that there is no purely monetary cure for inflation; rather, monetary and fiscal policies must be coordinated.

This fully expanded edition of "Rational Expectations and Inflation" includes Sargent's 2011 Nobel lecture, "United States Then, Europe Now." It also features new articles on the macroeconomics of the French Revolution and government budget deficits.

A common set of mathematical tools underlies dynamic optimization, dynamic estimation, and filtering. In "Recursive Models of Dynamic Linear Economies," Lars Peter Hansen and Thomas Sargent use these tools to create a class of econometrically tractable models of prices and quantities. They present examples from microeconomics, macroeconomics, and asset pricing. The models are cast in terms of a representative consumer. While Hansen and Sargent demonstrate the analytical benefits acquired when an analysis with a representative consumer is possible, they also characterize the restrictiveness of assumptions under which a representative household justifies a purely aggregative analysis.

Based on the 2012 Gorman lectures, the authors unite economic theory with a workable econometrics while going beyond and beneath demand and supply curves for dynamic economies. They construct and apply competitive equilibria for a class of linear-quadratic-Gaussian dynamic economies with complete markets. Their book stresses heterogeneity, aggregation, and how a common structure unites what superficially appear to be diverse applications. An appendix describes MATLAB(r) programs that apply to the book's calculations.

"This marvelous book is a fascinating and thoroughly original combination of economic theory, economic history, and the history of economic thought. In it, Sargent and Velde set out a simple, modern framework for thinking about monetary systems in which several denominations of currency circulate at once. They then use this framework to illuminate the workings of a huge variety of monetary arrangements in use from the Middle Ages to the present, and to trace the evolution of our understanding of the principles of monetary management. This is applied economics at its best."--Robert E. Lucas, Jr., University of Chicago, 1995 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences

"Thomas Sargent and Francois Velde have written a quiet masterpiece. "The Big Problem of Small Change" solves a nearly thousand-year old puzzle in monetary economics, it is a beautiful economic history, and a brilliant piece of intellectual history, showing how important ideas are in economic affairs."--John H. Cochrane, University of Chicago

"It is rare to be able to say of a book that it is not only of considerable importance from a scholarly point of view, but that it is also well written and aesthetically pleasing. Yet that is precisely the sort of book this is. "The Big Problem of Small Change" is also unusually clear and has none of the apparent obfuscation that other scholars accuse economists of practicing. Most scholars get confused when dealing with mint ratios, Gresham's Law, seigniorage rates, and so on. Amazingly, however, this is a book that will please even the most numismatically challenged among them."--Joel Mokyr, Northwestern University

"This collaboration between a prominent economic theorist and a verylearned historian of European monetary thought and experience yields a rather unusual book, one that may herald the way the world is going. To an economist and financial historian, this is pretty interesting stuff."--Richard Sylla, New York University

The standard theory of decision making under uncertainty advises the decision maker to form a statistical model linking outcomes to decisions and then to choose the optimal distribution of outcomes. This assumes that the decision maker trusts the model completely. But what should a decision maker do if the model cannot be trusted? Lars Hansen and Thomas Sargent, two leading macroeconomists, push the field forward as they set about answering this question. They adapt robust control techniques and apply them to economics. By using this theory to let decision makers acknowledge misspecification in economic modeling, the authors develop applications to a variety of problems in dynamic macroeconomics. Technical, rigorous, and self-contained, this book will be useful for macroeconomists who seek to improve the robustness of decision-making processes.

A guide to the economic modeling of household preferences, from two leaders in the field A common set of mathematical tools underlies dynamic optimization, dynamic estimation, and filtering. In Recursive Models of Dynamic Linear Economies, Lars Peter Hansen and Thomas Sargent use these tools to create a class of econometrically tractable models of prices and quantities. They present examples from microeconomics, macroeconomics, and asset pricing. The models are cast in terms of a representative consumer. While Hansen and Sargent demonstrate the analytical benefits acquired when an analysis with a representative consumer is possible, they also characterize the restrictiveness of assumptions under which a representative household justifies a purely aggregative analysis. Hansen and Sargent unite economic theory with a workable econometrics while going beyond and beneath demand and supply curves for dynamic economies. They construct and apply competitive equilibria for a class of linear-quadratic-Gaussian dynamic economies with complete markets. Their book, based on the 2012 Gorman lectures, stresses heterogeneity, aggregation, and how a common structure unites what superficially appear to be diverse applications. An appendix describes MATLAB programs that apply to the book's calculations.

In the past fifteen years, inflation has been conquered by many advanced countries. History reveals, however, that it has been conquered before and returned. In "The Conquest of American Inflation, " Thomas J. Sargent presents a groundbreaking analysis of the rise and fall of U.S. inflation after 1960. He examines two broad explanations for the behavior of inflation and unemployment in this period: the natural-rate hypothesis joined to the Lucas critique and a more traditional econometric policy evaluation modified to include adaptive expectations and learning. His purpose is not only to determine which is the better account, but also to codify for the benefit of the next generation the economic forces that cause inflation.

Sargent begins with an explanation of how American policymakers increased inflation in the early 1960s by following erroneous assumptions about the exploitability of the Phillips curve--the inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment. In subsequent chapters, he connects a sequence of ideas--self-confirming equilibria, least-squares and other adaptive or recursive learning algorithms, convergence of least-squares learners with self-confirming equilibria, and recurrent dynamics along escape routes from self-confirming equilibria. Sargent synthesizes results from macroeconomics, game theory, control theory, and other fields to extend both adaptive expectations and rational expectations theory, and he compellingly describes postwar inflation in terms of drifting coefficients. He interprets his results in favor of adaptive expectations as the relevant mechanism affecting inflation policy.

Providing an original methodological link between theoretical and policy economics, this book will engender much debate and become an indispensable text for academics, graduate students, and professional economists.

The tasks of macroeconomics are to interpret observations on economic aggregates in terms of the motivations and constraints of economic agents and to predict the consequences of alternative hypothetical ways of administering government economic policy. General equilibrium models form a convenient context for analyzing such alternative government policies. In the past ten years, the strengths of general equilibrium models and the corresponding deficiencies of Keynesian and monetarist models of the 1960s have induced macroeconomists to begin applying general equilibrium models.

This book describes some general equilibrium models that are dynamic, that have been built to help interpret time-series of observations of economic aggregates and to predict the consequences of alternative government interventions. The first part of the book describes dynamic programming, search theory, and real dynamic capital pricing models. Among the applications are stochastic optimal growth models, matching models, arbitrage pricing theories, and theories of interest rates, stock prices, and options. The remaining parts of the book are devoted to issues in monetary theory; currency-in-utility-function models, cash-in-advance models, Townsend turnpike models, and overlapping generations models are all used to study a set of common issues. By putting these models to work on concrete problems in exercises offered throughout the text, Sargent provides insights into the strengths and weaknesses of these models of money. An appendix on functional analysis shows the unity that underlies the mathematics used in disparate areas of rational expectations economics.

This book on dynamic equilibriummacroeconomics is suitable for graduate-level courses; a companion book, Exercises in "Dynamic Macroeconomic Theory," provides answers to the exercises and is also available from Harvard University Press.

"Rational Expectations and Econometric Practice " was first published in 1981. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Assumptions about how people form expectations for the future shape the properties of any dynamic economic model. To make economic decisions in an uncertain environment people must forecast such variables as future rates of inflation, tax rates, government subsidy schemes and regulations. The doctrine of rational expectations uses standard economic methods to explain how those expectations are formed.

This work collects the papers that have made significant contributions to formulating the idea of rational expectations. Most of the papers deal with the connections between observed economic behavior and the evaluation of alternative economic policies.

Robert E. Lucas, Jr., is professor of economics at the University of Chicago. Thomas J. Sargent is professor of economics at the University of Minnesota and adviser to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota.

The substantially revised fourth edition of a widely used text, offering both an introduction to recursive methods and advanced material, mixing tools and sample applications. Recursive methods provide powerful ways to pose and solve problems in dynamic macroeconomics. Recursive Macroeconomic Theory offers both an introduction to recursive methods and more advanced material. Only practice in solving diverse problems fully conveys the advantages of the recursive approach, so the book provides many applications. This fourth edition features two new chapters and substantial revisions to other chapters that demonstrate the power of recursive methods. One new chapter applies the recursive approach to Ramsey taxation and sharply characterizes the time inconsistency of optimal policies. These insights are used in other chapters to simplify recursive formulations of Ramsey plans and credible government policies. The second new chapter explores the mechanics of matching models and identifies a common channel through which productivity shocks are magnified across a variety of matching models. Other chapters have been extended and refined. For example, there is new material on heterogeneous beliefs in both complete and incomplete markets models; and there is a deeper account of forces that shape aggregate labor supply elasticities in lifecycle models. The book is suitable for first- and second-year graduate courses in macroeconomics. Most chapters conclude with exercises; many exercises and examples use Matlab or Python computer programming languages.

Written by Lars Peter Hansen (Nobel Laureate in Economics, 2013) and Thomas Sargent (Nobel Laureate in Economics, 2011), Uncertainty within Economic Models includes articles adapting and applying robust control theory to problems in economics and finance. This book extends rational expectations models by including agents who doubt their models and adopt precautionary decisions designed to protect themselves from adverse consequences of model misspecification. This behavior has consequences for what are ordinarily interpreted as market prices of risk, but big parts of which should actually be interpreted as market prices of model uncertainty. The chapters discuss ways of calibrating agents' fears of model misspecification in quantitative contexts.

How do people behave in new situations in which previous experience is not useful? The recent changes in Eastern Europe, for example, are unprecedented and there is not an available model on which to base the mechanisms that will govern the economics in this region. The concept of "bounded (or limited) rationality" is being developed to analyze behavior in such situations. In this book Thomas Sargent describes and interprets the recent work in the area, especially in statistics, econometrics, networks and artificial intelligence. He focuses on examples designed to illustrate the issues involved and the kinds of questions that are being asked and answered in this research. He points to further potential positive developments of the theory as well as some of its limitations.

This book is a companion volume to "Dynamic Macroeconomic Theory" by Thomas J. Sargent. It provides scrimmages in dynamic macroeconomic theory--precisely the kind of drills that people will need in order to learn the techniques of dynamic programming and its applications to economics. By doing these exercises, the reader can acquire the ability to put the theory to work in a variety of new situations, build technical skill, gain experience in fruitful ways of setting up problems, and learn to distinguish cases in which problems are well posed from cases in which they are not.

The basic framework provided by variants of a dynamic general equilibrium model is used to analyze problems in macroeconomics and monetary economics. An equilibrium model provides a mapping from parameters of preferences, technologies, endowments, and "rules of the game" to a probability model for time series. The rigor of the logical connections between theory and observations that the mapping provides is an attractive feature of dynamic equilibrium, or "rational expectations," models. This book gives repeated and varied practice in constructing and interpreting this mapping.