Inference for the Mean
CMSA 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United StatesSpeaker: Ulrich Mueller (Princeton) Title: Inference for the Mean Abstract: Consider inference about the mean of a population with finite variance, based on an i.i.d. sample. The usual t-statistic yields correct inference in large samples, but heavy tails induce poor small sample behavior. This paper combines extreme value theory for the smallest and largest observations with a normal approximation for […]
Optimally Imprecise Memory and Biased Forecasts
CMSA 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United StatesSpeaker: Michael Woodford (Columbia) Title: Optimally Imprecise Memory and Biased Forecasts Abstract: We propose a model of optimal decision making subject to a memory constraint. The constraint is a limit on the complexity of memory measured using Shannon’s mutual information, as in models of rational inattention; the structure of the imprecise memory is optimized (for a given decision problem and […]