Under the assumption of bounded rationality, economic agents learn from their past mistaken predictions by combining new and old information to form new beliefs. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the policy-maker, by affecting private agents’ learning process, determines the speed at which the economy converges to the rational expectation equilibrium. I find that by reacting strongly to private agents’ expected inflation, a central bank would increase the speed of convergence. I assess the relevance of the transition period from the learning to the rational expectations equilibrium when looking at a criterion for evaluating monetary policy decisions and suggest that a fast convergence is not always suitable.
Published in 2007 in: Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, v. 31, 9, pp. 3006-3041
