Empirical Evidence on the Formation of Price Expectations

Abstract

This article investigates empirical evidence on the structure of price expectations in the United States during the post-Korean War period. The study utilizes semiannual data which describe price expectations for six months and twelve months ahead. The objective is to use these two sets of data to test some of the well-known expectational hypotheses. Incidental to this we determine whether expectations satisfy the rationality hypothesis, and we briefly consider the accuracy of the predictions.