Information and Volatility

67 Pages Posted: 14 Jun 2014

See all articles by Dirk Bergemann

Dirk Bergemann

Yale University - Cowles Foundation - Department of Economics; Yale University - Cowles Foundation

Tibor Heumann

Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile

Stephen Morris

MIT

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: June 12, 2014

Abstract

In an economy of interacting agents with both idiosyncratic and aggregate shocks, we examine how the information structure determines aggregate volatility. We show that the maximal aggregate volatility is attained in a noise free information structure in which the agents confound idiosyncratic and common components of the payoff state, and display excess response to the common component, as in Lucas (1972). The upper bound on aggregate volatility is linearly increasing in the variance of idiosyncratic shocks, for any given variance of aggregate shocks. Our results hold in a setting of symmetric agents with linear best responses and normal uncertainty. We show our results by providing a characterization of the set of all joint distributions over actions and states that can arise in equilibrium under any information structure. This tractable characterization, extending results in Bergemann and Morris (2013b), can be used to address a wide variety of questions.

Keywords: Incomplete information, Bayes correlated equilibrium, Volatility, moments restrictions, Linear best responses, Quadratic payoffs

JEL Classification: C72, C73, D43, D83

Suggested Citation

Bergemann, Dirk and Heumann, Tibor and Morris, Stephen Edward, Information and Volatility (June 12, 2014). Cowles Foundation Discussion Paper No. 1928R, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2449264 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2449264

Dirk Bergemann (Contact Author)

Yale University - Cowles Foundation - Department of Economics ( email )

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HOME PAGE: http://www.econ.yale.edu/~dirk/

Yale University - Cowles Foundation

Box 208281
New Haven, CT 06520-8281
United States

Tibor Heumann

Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile ( email )

Avda. Vicuña Mackenna 4860
Macul, 780436
Chile

Stephen Edward Morris

MIT ( email )

77 Massachusetts Avenue
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
United States

HOME PAGE: http://https://economics.mit.edu/faculty/semorris

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