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Interpreting Economic Time Series

Staff Report 58 | Published April 1, 1980

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Author

Thomas J. Sargent New York University and Hoover Institution
Interpreting Economic Time Series

Abstract

This paper explores some of the implications for econometric practice of the principle that people’s observed behavior will change when their constraints change. In dynamic contexts, a proper definition of people’s constraints includes among them laws of motion that describe the evolution of the taxes they must pay and the prices of the goods that they buy and sell. Changes in agents’ perceptions of these laws of motion (or constraints) will in general produce changes in the schedules that describe the choices they make as a function of the information that they possess. Until very recently, received dynamic econometric practice ignored this principle. The practice of dynamic econometrics should be changed so that it is consistent with the principle that people’s rules of choice are influenced by their constraints. This is a substantial undertaking, and involves major adjustments in the ways that we formulate, estimate, and simulate econometric models.




Published in: _The legacy of Robert Lucas, Jr._ (Vol. 2, 1999, pp. 370-405) Published in: _The reappraisal of econometrics_ (1997, pp. 3-38) Published in: _The new classical macroeconomics_ (Vol. 2, 1992, pp. 61-96) Published in: _Journal of Political Economy_ (Vol. 89, No. 2, April 1981, pp. 213-248) https://doi.org/10.1086/260963.