On Mon, 11 Nov 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> Yes.  Somewhere along the line someone--either the most ardents adherents or 
> the most disingenuous opponents--has defined "rational expectations" as 
> meaning that people are perfect prognosticators, omnicient not only about 
> past conditions, but about  future conditons as well.  Under the definition 
> nobody has "rational expectations."  

Ummm...not quite.  Rational expectations just means that a person's
expectations are unbiased.  There can be high variance, but the variance
is around a true mean.  

Check Sargent's short piece on rational expectations for a primer:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RationalExpectations.html

Eric Crampton


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