Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Contingent Expectations: Uncertainty, Risk, and Economic Behavior in Historical Perspective

Contingent Expectations: Uncertainty, Risk, and Economic Behavior in Historical Perspective

Nützenadel, Alexander
Streb, Jochen

Hardcover

EconomicsInvesting & Finance

ISBN10: 0691248532
ISBN13: 9780691248530
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: May 19 2026
Pages: 312
Weight: 1.37
Height: 1.20 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.30
Language: English

An empirical analysis and new theoretical framework for understanding economic expectations and decision-making in different historical settings.

Expectations play a crucial role in shaping economic behavior. But how are expectations actually formed, and how has this changed over time? The financial crisis of 2007-08 cast doubt on traditional theories of expectation formation, particularly the rational expectations framework. In Contingent Expectations, Alexander Nützenadel and Jochen Streb examine the ways that past experiences influence the economic expectations and decision-making of households, investors, and policymakers through history, and offer an alternative perspective. Combining a comprehensive empirical analysis of expectation formation from the eighteenth century to the present day with an assessment of the relevant economic theory, Nützenadel and Streb present a new theoretical framework, contingent expectations, for understanding economic expectation.

Nützenadel and Streb show how economic actors developed new forecasting methods in response to rising uncertainty brought on by the Industrial Revolution, the expansion of global trade, financial market integration, and environmental crises. Tracing the evolution of economic theories on expectations, they find that when growing market volatility made forecasting more complex, economic agents often adapted with remarkable flexibility to changing circumstances. Challenging prevailing concepts of expectations, including rational choice and adaptive expectations, Nützenadel and Streb emphasize the heterogeneity of economic agents' cognitive practices--in particular, the need to consider variation in information costs and historical experience. Expectation formation, they argue, is contingent on each individual's current decision-making situation. Their account of the history of economic expectations has significant implications for current debates in economics.

Also from

Nützenadel, Alexander

View All

Also in

Economics

View All