Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2013
The Stockholm School set out to perform a very ambitious dynamic macroanalysis, their so-called sequence analysis. However, the school was faced with a number of problems since it lacked the necessary tools for such analysis. Let me mention some of these problems.
Expectations and expectations formation were crucial for the dynamic method, but the Stockholm School did not have a theory of expectations. The participants of the School instead assumed arbitrarily given expectations. The exception was that of Lindahl's self-fulfilled expectations in a deterministic framework, that is, the assumption of perfect foresight in an intertemporal general equilibrium setup.
The Stockholm School also suffered from having insufficient microfoundations for its behavioral assumptions. They either lacked the capacity or the desire to provide such microfoundations. Instead they assumed rather arbitrarily given response functions. Lindahl assumed, for instance, that when expectations were fulfilled, ex ante plans for the next period were a function of ex post realizations of the current period. Lundberg assumed, for instance, that investment was a given function of current profits, regardless of whether or not expectations were fulfilled. These arbitrary assumptions led to arbitrary conclusions, what David Laidler calls a bewildering variety of possible outcomes depending upon the specific set of assumptions made.
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