Survey Data in Economics and Finance

Michael Weber, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business

June 17 – 21, 2024

Expectations are central to all forward-looking decisions households make. Yet, interest in the measurement and determinants of subjective expectations waned following the rational expectations revolution. More recently, however, there has been growing attention to different ways of eliciting and measuring the subjective expectations of consumers and firms. For the case of inflation expectations, research has documented deviations from the benchmark of full information rational expectations including upward-biased expectations compared to ex-post realizations and professional forecasts and large cross-sectional dispersion as well as the crucial role that salient price changes such as the price changes of grocery and energy inflation play in shaping inflation expectations. The course will first provide a methodological overview on how to elicit expectations and discuss stylized facts about inflation and stock market return expectations. It will move on to discuss the determinants of expectations and how these expectations shape individuals’ consumption, savings, leverage and investment decisions. We will then study how central banks and governments can manage the expectations of households through policy interventions and communication. Finally, we will discuss the design of information provision and acquisition experiments.

Michael Weber is Associate Professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He is also a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research in the Monetary Economics and Asset Pricing groups, Research Affiliate in the Monetary Economics and Fluctuations programme of CEPR, a member of the Macro Finance Society, a Research Professor at Ifo Institute and a research affiliate at the CESifo Research Network. Moreover, he is academic consultant for the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, the Bank of Finland, the Deutsche Bundesbank and several other central banks. His research interests include asset pricing, macroeconomics, international finance, and household finance. His work on downside risk in currency markets and other asset classes earned the 2013 AQR Insight Award. Throughout 2022, Repec listed him as top young economist whose first publication of any kind was 10 or fewer years ago. He has published in leading economics and finance journals such as the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Review of Economic Studies, the Review of Financial Studies and the Journal of Financial Economics.

Application

The application deadline ended on March 15, 2024.

Admission and Registration

The Study Center communicates admission decision by the end of April, 2024, and sends participants the corresponding invoice. The registration form will be sent after the Center receives the payment of the course fee.