Modern economic theory gives an important role to expectations as an influence on outcomes. This paper reviews evidence on how well measures of expectations conform to outcomes. It confirms earlier results that measures taken from financial markets perform poorly as predictors of outcomes. Looking at the individual responses to the Confederation of British Industry’s Industrial Trends Survey, it does find, however, that there are significant correlations between expected and realised outcomes of wages, prices, costs orders and employment. It also finds some evidence that actual prices reflect expected future prices, but with a coefficient much lower than economic theory predicts. There is evidence that forecast errors are explained by past forecasts, as well as revisions to the economic outlook, casting doubt on the idea that firms’ forecasts make the best use of the information available at the time. The paper concludes by observing that, while expectations are undoubtedly important, economists need to build on work looking at how they are derived instead of simply assuming they are rational.

中文翻译：

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经济学家是否期望过高？

现代经济理论赋予期望作为对结果的影响的重要作用。本文回顾了有关预期衡量标准与结果的一致性的证据。它证实了早期的结果，即从金融市场采取的措施作为结果的预测指标表现不佳。查看个人对英国工业联合会的回应产业趋势调查但是，它确实发现工资、价格、成本订单和就业的预期结果和实际结果之间存在显着相关性。它还发现一些证据表明实际价格反映了预期的未来价格，但系数远低于经济理论的预测。有证据表明，预测错误可以由过去的预测以及对经济前景的修正来解释，这让人怀疑公司的预测是否充分利用了当时可用的信息。该论文的结论是，尽管预期无疑很重要，但经济学家需要在工作的基础上研究它们是如何得出的，而不是简单地假设它们是理性的。