ABSTRACT

The rational expectations hypothesis holds that agents should be modeled as not making systematic forecasting errors and has become a central model-building principle of modern economics. The hypothesis is often justified on the grounds that it coheres with the general methodological principle of economic rationality. In this article, I propose a novel Darwinian market justification for rational expectations which does not require either structural knowledge or statistical learning, as is commonly required in the economic literature. Rather, this Darwinian market account reconceives rationality as a market level phenomenon instead of as an individualistic property.

摘要

理性预期假设认为，代理人应该被建模为不会产生系统性的预测错误，并已成为现代经济学的核心模型构建原则。该假设通常是合理的，因为它与经济理性的一般方法论原则相一致。在这篇文章中，我提出了一种新颖的达尔文式理性预期市场理由，它不需要经济文献中通常要求的结构知识或统计学习。相反，这种达尔文式的市场账户将理性重新理解为市场层面的现象，而不是个人主义的财产。